Waar komen jullie toch vandaan?[1]
Waar de smurfenhuisjes staan
Hebben jullie ook een eigen taal?
Ja, die spreken wij allemaal
(…)
Waarom zijn de smurfen klein?
Omdat jullie groter zijn.

Trans.[2]
Where do you all come from?
Where the Smurf houses stand on
Do you have a language that’s yours?
Yes, we all speak that of course
(…)
Why are the Smurfs very small?
Because you are bigger and tall.

 

 

A square carton pouch. Round vinyl. Green background. A bearded old man is looking straight at the camera. His body is invisible, flanked by two blue Smurfs, who reach higher than him. On the right, a flower decorates the ear of the Smurf. Eyes upwards. On the left, the Smurf stares back in excitement. They communicate. The bearded man is holding onto their feet. His mouth opened slightly, just as the Smurf with the flower on the right. The Smurfs wear a white hat. The man wears a round black hat. Superimposed on the image, in a curved letter font, Vader Abraham In Smurfenland. This is the first record I ever owned.

 

 

Music is streamed today; rarely tangible and physically collected. Untouchable behind a glass surface that translates the presence of my fingertips. Songs have retreated to the immaterial realm, where they once belonged. Not long ago I read that humans are the only land creatures that sing, besides mice whose pitch is too high for us to hear. The other singers live in trees, they fly, or dwell deep in oceans.
Lyrics can still be printed.
I use them as titles of my work.
LP covers are square.

Years later, it was during a school trip to the Netherlands that I first encountered Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915). I remember it hanging above a doorway in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, but assume my memory is failing. It must have been in the corner of the room, resembling its initial hanging in Russia in 1915. I had been painting and crafting and my young mind had been looking for meaning, and it was there that things fell together, or perhaps that they fall apart.

The sleeve is square but the circle makes the music.

Two years earlier, another school trip led to an encounter with the touring exhibition “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985” mounted at Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. There I realised the potential power an image could hold. I bought the catalogue with my pocket money.

Art as a state of consciousness. Art as a connecting, sensual, and empowering language.

And then came the awareness of the wave of strong women artists. I was small and they were tall. Isa Genzken, Jenny Holzer, Rachel Whiteread and Rosemarie Trockel.

Where are they today?

My home is on the beautiful island of Taiwan where I don’t speak the language well. Last summer, I was fortunate to visit the studio of artist Aruwai Kaumakan. Her studio in the indigenous village of Paiwan was vibrant with works and food she shared with guests, with whom she would talk about weaving, connecting cultures and people. She spoke about collaborations, and traditions that are reshaped to keep them alive.

I still hear the songs of the Paiwan performers at the Tjimur Dance Theatre in my mind. There we were together. In it together. Listening to a future to be shared.

Who will be in in ’99? I don’t recall, but I remember that we are a collection; collected, compiled, always on loan, borrowing, returning, giving, receiving, a shared space.
Circular. Not square.