There is something about words. In expert hands… pa biblioteca
27/06/2018
Natusha Croes, artista contemporaneo a regala biblioteca un imahen di su obra. Esaki ta destina pa e espacio publico. Gerente a keda masha contento cu e obra aki cu tin di haber cu buki, palabra y mensahe. Natusha Croes a traha riba un proyecto special durante su estudio na Gerrit Rietveld Academie na Amsterdam. E tarea, cu a rekeri transmuta, un medio di expresion pa un otro. Natusha a dicidi di transmuta un buki pa un imahen crea durante un performance. Inspira pa e frase den e buki cu ta bisa lo sigiuente:
“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
Background of the artwork:
“During my formation at art school in the year of 2012 I read like I had not done before because an eloquence in language was required, an understanding of the architecture of words, the building blocks that could align the complete chaos happening within. If before I was taking teaspoonful of literature now I was gulping down bowls, hoping to vocalize thoroughly the answer to the question; “what do you mean, when you present this work?”
“Responds such as expression, imagination, intuition somehow weren’t enough, there was an awareness to be cultivated, a depth to be understood about your cultural position; a social awareness, a political awareness, and a financial awareness, sharp components that could make you understand how the art world operates and what are the stories that “matter”. “The culture I was raised in is an oral culture; reading isn’t as much stimulated as it is obliged in order to guarantee a future study in the Netherlands. All through high school this thirst wasn’t really there, the model of understanding the world was flooding from the Netherlands, there was never a dialogue to be had, it was only an application to be made, applying and surrendering to the most effective way of guaranteeing an intellectual development. Undergoing a Dutch education system gave a sense of displacement I never managed to embrace. My senses where guiding me through the language of Papiamento, which is my native tongue, it informed me about my environment and the people shaping it, but my intelligence was measured through Dutch, two separate realities I could never unite. The information my school books were giving me were shaped to fit the European perspective and that’s not to say that it did not fit entirely here, it just did not encompass any of the experiences I was having on Aruba, emphasizing even more the crude reality that all that we do here is import, import culture, import language, import. Putting us again at a place where we can’t really say where our culture sits, where our identity begins and the other fades, the pros and cons balance each other, there was always an abundance of ways of perceiving things around here, the ones prevailing over powered, speaking English was a requirement, living on an island that runs on a tourism industry attracting mostly financially stable Americans concluded into an overexposure of American culture, beside it being the most attractive and ready to consume culture; English is being widely spoken by most youngsters here. So I read, read profusely I was eager during my years at the academy to embrace the dialogue that you would be constantly having as an artist and I had to understand what they meant when they said I was undergoing a cultural jet lag. I had to understand the arrogant intonation underneath that comment, had to understand and communicate in this international academic atmosphere that used English to trespass the boundaries, why I was doing the things I was doing and what impact it had on the world. Language became central to my practice, it felt like Art school wanted me to do math with words, calculating the best possible combination that would provide a moment of complete transparency in the somewhat disorderly world, that could be, any artistic endeavor”.
“Language became a tool, it empowered and somehow it never destroyed and if it did it was only to deconstruct ideas, implanting new ones on the horizon, new mentalities, and new approaches towards our situation”.
Natusha Croes
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