DOINA KRAAL
http://www.doinakraal.com/index.php
Sprookjesbos 2 (Enchanted forest)
Slide Installation
2005
Point Blank Gallery (drill hall)
Curator Bie Venter
Johannesburg, SA.
Five aluminium trees are suspended from the ceiling with nylon thread. The aluminium tree has exactly the same shape as the slide that is projected onto it. The installation was shown at the drill hall in Johannesburg. It was an exhibition at night-time and since the building is all glass, the trees could be seen from the street as well. The trees range in size between 180 and 160 cm.
Sprookjesbos (Enchanted forest)
Slide Installation
2005
Moira
Utrecht, NL.
Zoutwoestijn
Medium
Date
Project / Show
Mexico
Kronen totaal
Medium
Date
Project / Show
Location
Little princess
Medium
Date
Project / Show
Location
Onder tafel
Medium
Date
Project / Show
Location
The media I use are often sources of light; film-, video- and slide-projections, artificial or natural light or photographs. When making an installation, I can create a world for the viewer to step into. Through projection I can make my own ephemeral world. A recognizable world yet different from the world as it appears to you.
For the piece ‘Sprookjesbos’, enchanted forest, the pictures, I made my own forest. An enchanted forest where the trees and the forest play a fundamental role and not the fairytale creatures that often make a forest enchanted. I built the forest by staging bonsai, (trees in pots) ivy, soil, lights and fog. I put on old whimsical stem next to a slender elm-tree next to a tall pine-tree, in nature you would never find these to be neighbours. Neither these pictures nor my other work is manipulated.
Recognizable elements, such as everyday objects and ordinary situations I bring together with impossible, unusual and fantastic ideas. Themes like secrets, dreams, fairy-tales, stories, history, rituals, historic and contemporary architecture, technique, nature, landscapes and forests always reappear in my work.
In his Kellendonk-lecture Bas Heijne writes what the function or aim of art can be. Art is artificial and should not, like journalism, try to be truthful; for it would simplify the untouchable reality or werkelijkheid (I prefer to use the word werkelijkheid) we live in. To acknowledge the reality as a mystery and to approximate the mystery in art, it is necessary for an art-piece to show an awareness of its own artificiality. This is only possible in an atmosphere that is not reality itself. Frans Kellendonk himself says that when he uses the word reality or ‘werkelijkheid’, he does not know what he is talking about. To me ‘werkelijkheid’ is the unknown, a mystery. When something is not directly recognizable as something coming from the world as we experience it, I get curious.
When I work with sound or music, the sound is more than a background jingle, without image it should be as strong. I grew up surrounded by music. Music gives me a very familiar and intimate feeling, but at the same time I always discover new things. For the piece ‘my palace room’ I adapted one of my grandfather’s compositions. When I made this piece, I was living on a houseboat close to the Wester church. The sound of the carillon was familiar, but at the same time alienating. Music can be exceptionally magical and mysterious. Next to it being a medium that I enjoy working with, it is an important source of inspiration.
I don’t avoid obstacles. My projects are often the realization of a seemingly impossible dream. Because of that it is insuperable that I sometimes end up in complex situations or that I have to build intricate constructions.
Curriculum vitae
Doina Alexandra Salomé Kraal
Born: 26-10-1980, Breukelen, The Netherlands
Address: Plantage Kerklaan 37, 3, 1018 CV Amsterdam, NL
Phone: 020-4220324 or 06-18848623
E-mail: doina.kraal@gmail.com
Website soon online: www.doinakraal.nl
Education
2002 – 2003: Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK.
Master in Fine Art.
Diploma MA Fine Art.
Jan. 2001 - March 2001: Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK.
Bachelor Fine Art. Erasmus Exchange-project.
1999 - 2000: University of Amsterdam, NL.
Part time study Philosophy. No diploma.
1998 - 2002: Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, NL.
Audio visual department, (V.A.V.)
Diploma equals Bachelor in Fine Art.
1992 – 1998: Montessori Lyceum Amsterdam, NL.
Diploma V.W.O.
Exhibitions and presentations
2006
Kunstvlaai 6: alternative art fair, Amsterdam, NL.
Hilton hotel: video installation ‘staring at each other’ in collaboration with Alberto De Michele, Amsterdam, NL.
2005
Exhibition space Moira: solo exhibition ‘Sprookjesbos’ (enchanted forest), Utrecht, NL.
Point Blank Gallery (drill hall): solo exhibition ‘Sprookjesbos 2’, curator Bie Venter, Johannesburg, SA.
2004
PSWAR: group-show ‘The A4 exchange’, Amsterdam, NL.
Felix Meritis: group-show ‘Happy Chaos: Kunst!’ (Art), Amsterdam, NL.
Kunsthuis Secretarie: group-show ‘Nest’, curator Silvia Rottenberg, Meppel, NL.
2003
Park TV: video work ‘party balloons’ broadcasted. Made in collaboration with Alberto De Michele.
Central Saint Martins: Masters degree show in London, UK.
Cobden Club: solo exhibition, London, UK.
2002
Gerrit Rietveld Academie: final exam exhibition, Amsterdam, NL.
Space 44: group-show ‘Touch and Go’, curator Shaheen Morali, London, UK.
2001
Central Saint Martins: exhibition with five exchange students, London, UK.
Beurs van Berlage: video-installation 2, during the opening of a congress, Amsterdam, NL.
Gerrit Rietveld Academie: presentation “Princess Doina”, Amsterdam, NL.
2001 en 2002: Tart T.V. Salto Television: three video works broadcasted.
1999
Beurs van Berlage: video-installation 1, during a farewell dinner of Piet Borst, Amsterdam, NL.
Scholarships and subsidies
2004-2005: Received a stipend ‘startstipendium’ from Fonds BKVB, this is a subsidy for promising artists to develop their artist practice.
September – October 2005: Received a stipend from the Dutch embassy in South Africa for an exhibition.
April 2004: Received a subsidy from the Mondriaan Stichting for Happy Chaos: Kunst!, the exhibition (organisation of and participation in the exhibition)
2002 – 2003: Received a full scholarship, ‘Talenten Programma’ (Talent Programme), to do a Masters in Fine Art in London.
Handed out by the Nuffic. (Ministerie van OC&W, Dutch government)
2001: Received a scholarship from Erasmus for a three months exchange programme.
Other activities
2007
Video-workshop part of the orientation course at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.
2005
Production assistant for PRIX DE ROME.NL Dutch state prize for art and architecture at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten.
2005
workshop at the at the photography department of the University of Capetown, Michaelis, Cape Town, South Africa.
Talk about my artists practice at Michaelis.
Guest-tutor at the Design and Photography Academy in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
Talk about my artists practice at Design and Photography Academy, Stellenbosch.
Talk about my artists practice at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.
2004
Teaching art and theatre to children, at the NSA.
Felix Meritis, ‘Happy Chaos Kunst’ (Art), an event with debates about art and a group exhibition. I took part in the overall organisation and curated the show; I participated in the show as well. In collaboration with Vrij Nederland, Amsterdam
1998 - 2005: Teaches piano and music.
Publications
2004: Catalogue Happy Chaos Kunst, Ixopusada, NL.
26 November 2004: Meppeler Courant, Contrasten in kunst vormt ‘Nest’, NL.
06 December 2004: Meppeler Courant, Huiselijkheid troef in Secretarie, NL.
17 October 2005: Nathaniel Stern, Chris Doherty, SA.
2005: ‘to create and invent’ article on www.opina.eu (see below)
To create and invent
In certain parts of the world feminism has been successful, but even in the western countries where women have been fighting for their rights for years now, it is unclear why women still operate in the background. Women in the West are educated, have jobs, they have more or less the same opportunities and rights as men, some of them no longer stand alone in taking care of the household and the children… Of course even in the West there are still a lot of women who are the victims of patriarchy, but much has been achieved.
Simone de Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in 1949 and stated: ‘The free woman is just being born.’ Is it possible that I am this free woman? The fifty-six years that passed since she wrote her famous book make up quite a long time and many things have changed. Can women call themselves free yet? What are they freed from? What can and should the free woman do?
In the first place she should be completely independent. She must not only be independent in her personal maintenance, she must also be intellectually and creatively independent, she must be innovative, maybe even revolutionary. Female artists, authors, composers, inventors, architects, poets, philosophers, scientists and politicians: we cannot have enough of them. Once women are able to create and invent this will be the ultimate proof of her freedom. War and struggle might sometimes stimulate people to think creatively, but when constrained -like women have been for a long time - it is very hard to reach a point of excellence. In The Obstacle Race (1979), Germaine Greer concludes that great artists can’t be made out of damaged egos with defective wills, with libidos driven out of reach and energy. The imposition of traditional social constraints has robbed women of the chance of excellence. So when do women get their ‘chance of excellence’? Does a woman have to be freed, or does she have to be born free? If she is freed, she once wasn’t free and therefore she will still have a damaged ego.
The French philosopher, psychoanalyst and linguist Luce Irigaray, has written on language, power, women, gender and patriarchal mythologies. In her eyes, feminism is a critique of a world created by men. Women that criticize that world will remain subject to this world. According to Irigaray history and language are a creation of men that, among other constructions, define the world. For women to be independent or free, they should design or develop their own culture, identity and language that will suit them, and learn how to use them in their own way. Her main issue is how women can turn into women. In a way Irigaray wants to change society as a whole, by saying that equality by means of material possession alone is not enough, but spiritual and cultural well-being and justice have to be won over. This can only be achieved by transforming language and systems of representation, whereas now they are only appropriate to men’s subjectivity. For women to find assurance in society and to feel respected, they have got to have subjective rights equivalent to those of men, without being subordinated to masculine identity.
‘Art, literature, philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on human liberty’, states Simone de Beauvoir. To be able to create anything artistic or philosophical, you have got to be fundamentally free. According to de Beauvoir to become an artist, general education won’t do; development through free movement and transcendence is needed. De Beauvoir mentions Emily Bronte as a successful artist due to isolation, her confrontations with death, nature and faith, and Rosa Luxembourg who was ugly and therefore never tried to make herself an object to anyone. She was all spirit and freedom. Constraint and tradition kept women from feeling responsible for the universe and that is the most important reason for her indifference. De Beauvoir wrote: ‘As long as she still has to struggle to become a human being, she cannot become a creator.’ But de Beauvoir sketches the woman as a lacking creature, the negative of men. The title of her famous book The Second Sex, which presupposes the presence of the first sex, emphasizes the idea that she defines women as secondary and “Other” to men. De Beauvoir’s answer to the question ‘why there have been no great female artists?’, must be: because they did not do like men did. They did not take responsibility for the universe, they did not live in solitude, did not face confrontations with the given world, their physical weakness made them passive. She seems to state that the only way possible to become a genius, to become a van Gogh or a Mozart, is in the way it has already been done.
If you consider women to be different from men, it leaves more space to imagine a distinct female identity, a distinct way of communicating and a relation to the world which is based on women’s own subjectivity. It is necessary to redefine what female is, to escape from patriarchy and create a new world. Also, when I think of women creating art, ideas and situations to function and work in, they need to find a way to emphasize the advantages rather than the lacks. The way de Beauvoir describes the woman as weak is only in relation to specific elements of men, such as physical strength, the ability to obtain power, certain achievements in history and pragmatic thinking.
Beauvoir is not the only one who comes up with the horrors of being a woman. Is feminism then only about historical disasters and endless injustice? There is no doubt de Beauvoir was a feminist. Feminists are women - or men - who want to change women’s condition and who undertake action to achieve this. De Beauvoir gave feminism a good start, but where The Second Sex is in its essence a critique, Irigaray takes feminism further. Instead of trying to find the liberation of women in aspiring equality of the sexes, Irigaray looks at solutions that lie beyond anything designed by men. The exploitation of women is based on the differences between the sexes and can only be ended through those differences.
Irigaray’s ideas inspire me both as a woman and as an artist. However, I dare say I am from another generation and I had a different upbringing from de Beauvoir, Irigaray or Germaine Greer. I believe that I am a woman already in the full pregnancy of the word. As the daughter of a feminist mother I have always been very critical towards the world and its structures, but because my mum has achieved so much already I have taken certain things for granted too. I am given every imaginable opportunity and I try to make the best use of it. I chose to be an artist because I like to create my own world and in art you can easily be intellectually independent. In art, there must be enough space and freedom to find a way to develop your own language, not necessarily in words, but by means of expression and independence. I don’t believe that we no longer live in a sexist society, but as long as I manage not to be distracted by this society, I must be able to achieve excellence. I don’t believe in isolation, art exists to communicate, but it is important for artists to develop their inner world, to find their fascinations, to define aesthetics and to let their creativity bloom. In the western world today both as a woman and as an artist it must be possible to live and create art, without having to struggle. I am young and I still have to prove myself to the world, but there have been women before me who had their moments of excellence. They did not excel because they were feminists who wrote a smart article on gender issues, who sang a girlpower song or who invented a new law to help women get on their way (although of course these things were important to allow women to shine) No, I mean women who had a moment of excellence because they were able to design a wonderful building or write a great book, make a conceptual art piece or create anything substantial without having to struggle for it because they were women. Did these women reach their state of excellence by using their own language? Like Irigaray expects us to develop?
When you believe an art piece to be good, it functions as a successful autonomous and independent piece and therefore it carries its beauty or strength as an intrinsic value. If an art piece has an intrinsic value that belongs to the piece of art alone, then the piece itself must be sexless. There is sex in the artist and of course in the spectator, but not deliberately in the art piece itself. A successful art piece though, can have feminine or masculine aspects, or even be recognized as a feminine piece of art, but not as a ‘female’ piece of art. In its essence art must be sexless in order to be excellent.
Apart from the distinction between ‘female’ and ‘feminine’ art, I do think there have been women who made and make art that is ‘feminist’. Take for example a piece of ‘propaganda art’, such as ‘The Bride’, made by Joana Vasconcelos, an enormous chandelier made out of 14.000 tampons shown at the Biennale in Venice this year. Although this is a fun piece, maybe even beautiful, and political too, in the end I don’t think feminist art can ever be excellent. I can be disappointed when I see feminist art, which often shows anger and pain. Art can be about many things and should also be used to raise important issues, but I believe it is the time for a lot of women to enjoy and reap the fruits of our mothers, not only artists, but all women who want to create, invent and shimmer!
Excellent art is not only about beauty, so much we know after this last century of mind-blowing contemporary art. But damaged women, or the daughters of those women, might find it helpful to have a profound understanding of what beauty can be. One of Irigaray’s great suggestions of how to create beauty, is for women to rediscover the originality of their works. She presumes that in Prehistory, women did participate in civil and religious life, written signs were still partially figurative, non-abstract, arbitrary, fiduciary and women were represented as goddesses. Women should get back to women as goddesses: as women-goddesses and mother-goddesses.
The surgeon and writer Leonard Shlain has written the book The Alphabet Versus The Goddess (1998), in which he shows that pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images and feminine values. He claims that writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women and strengthened patriarchy and misogyny. He states that speaking and listening engages both sides of the brain, but writing and reading or literacy (the use of the alphabet), relies more on one: the masculine side, which is the left hemisphere that processes tasks traditionally male. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, processes tasks traditionally female, of both men and women. A traditionally male task is for example hunting-killing. The female tasks are more related to caring. The left hemisphere processes information in a linear fashion (such as algebra, logic, reason and determinism); the right hemisphere recognizes images and has the capacity to perceive the world in a more synthetically, holistically, simultaneously and concretely way. Literacy stimulates the development of a more logical, but less magical mind. Furthermore, Shlain states that the brains of women are not as sharply divided as the brains of men. Women do not as often as men express extremes. Is it possible that the brain is formed by our different behaviour as men and women? Or is brain dependent on genetic structures? Both nature and nurture explanations can be defended, but scientists have been careful in making harsh statements. Shlain believes women’s status is on the upswing, but much work remains to be done. As word and image come into balance, which he thinks is possible -through among others, photography, television, movies, the computer and the Internet (as they are not linear)- so will left and right hemispheres and masculine and feminine.
In a way Shlain’s and Irigaray’s ideas can be linked: they both speak of differences between men and women, they both blame language for misogyny or oppression and believe it to be necessary to get back to worshipping the goddess. Whereas for Irigaray women need to find their own way to cope with or develop language, Shlain puts more emphasis on the importance of image for both men and women to get back to a more feminine, less linear and more magical way of expression. Once women have rediscovered themselves men and women should take over each other’s good habits. In the end, we might look more and more like each other, and produce sexless art, products, buildings, writings and so on, with a touch of both femininity and masculinity.