Outer space constitutes inner space: the impressions and experiences that make up life are for Jorieke Rottier initially all equally important. The pressure to interpret, measure and judge decreases through the actions involved in making work. Expectations disappear, creating space for attentive presence.
For Jorieke, making work is largely about attention, so her work is broad and focused on possibilities. "By working with materials such as stones and threads, I think I am describing a non-round circle, while searching, looking and thinking with head and hands. This is an ongoing movement. Inner space forms outer space.
In May 2024, Jorieke Rottier worked for two weeks as artist-in-residence at Slipvillan in Sweden. Slipvillan is an artist initiative, exhibition venue and studio building run by Laetita Deschamps, Rikard Fåhreus, Ina Rödén and a number of "members. As a third artist, she may work from spaceCAESURE in Middelburg to engage in the artistic exchange with Slipvillan: Giel Louws and Hans Overvliet preceded her.
Walking on Långholmen, a green island in the heart of Stockholm, I connected with the place. A place to spend free time, to retreat, I thought. I feel watched through the windows of the apartment buildings across the street, by the people gathering on the little beach in the spring sun. This being watched relates to the island in different ways: from the airing place in the former prison to the open-air theater, which has a similar shape. Both have a central point, but with an opposite purpose: to keep an overview of prisoners across from being seen by as many people as possible. Time passes and the structures remain.
The island is connected to the next island by two small bridges. And then there is Sweden's largest steel bridge, the Västerbron (western bridge), which seems to ignore Långholmen. From that bridge you have wonderful views of the city. Under that bridge, a trail of dust and rock breaks through the exuberant greenery of Långholmen. The green is a gift of the seeds that fell into the water from trading ships, germinated from the muck the prisoners had to cover the island with. Next to the bridge, a paper airplane folded in stainless steel recalls the crash that took place there during an air show.
In my project plan I wrote, among other things, that I wanted to walk and work with the materials that wash up on Långholmen. I live and work along the Westerschelde, which leaves all kinds of - mostly untraceable - material on the coast of Walcheren (NL). Working with washed up material is natural in my working process. During my walks along the coast I collect impressions and materials. My children (baby and toddler) remind me every day of the importance of walking. They teach me to go even slower. They show me that you can use all the senses to experience yourself as part of your environment.
Walking on Långholmen, a green island in the heart of Stockholm, I connect with the place
As Kierkegaard wrote somewhere, ''never lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself to well-being [...] I walk myself into my best thoughts.' A quote I found in the book The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, about how among nomadic peoples and specifically among Australian Aborigines, their lives coincide with the landscape.
Already during the second walk it became clear that there is no real "washing ashore" on Långholmen: the chestnuts blackened by brackish water that I found turned out to come from a tree thirty meters away. The ropes I finally used to make an outdoor sculpture most likely came from the shipyard near the site.
At one of Stockholm's many artist-run initiatives, Tegen2, I meet Anthony Frank Grahamsdaughter. As curator, she curated the current exhibit, which highlights hate crimes against Sami and other minority groups. She touches me with her personal story of her Native American family's history and how contemporary Western colonialism and racism are experienced. She shows me work by Lena Stenberg, among others, who wrote a book about the disruption of Sami life. When Nordic countries and Russia closed their borders to Sami between 1800 and 1900, it was no longer possible to follow the reindeer throughout Lapland, and a struggle for the right to live according to their traditions began.
Before leaving for Sweden, I read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, in which, through her embodiment of scientific, personal and native wisdom, she demonstrates and inspires the importance of the relationship between humans and the land. There is much more to say about this but during the residency the above came together for me as an urgent question about how I relate to this and the urgency of my relationship with my environment. Until now I experienced it as fairly self-evident, and that self-evidence is now both confirmed and deepened and questioned. Something to work on slowly and attentively.
That you can use all the senses to experience yourself as part of your environment
During the Open Studio, halfway through AIR, I shared some of these thoughts. A conversation ensued with fellow artists Masoud Shashavari and Jannike Brantås around artistic processes and how a change in environment affects them. At one point, Jannike asked what rituals are needed to get to work, a question that still resonates.
To get an impression of the Stockholm archipelago, we took a two-and-a-half-hour boat trip to the island of Grinda, in the heart of the archipelago. Every moment I expected to discover an "empty" horizon consisting of sky and water: every moment there was another island there. Mosses, one of the first life forms to take hold on bare rock (and be eaten by reindeer), eventually formed the work in Slipvillan's studio horizon for an archipelago (2024). From the mosses grow grasses, their roots searching for a foothold among the rocks, as the trees here do wholesale. And unlike at home, where tree roots and dune grasses are desperately needed to hold the sand and clay of the dikes - and our feet dry.
Every moment I expected to discover an "empty" horizon
I try to capture these experiences in a map of Långholmen, connecting the various places on the island with concepts such as "collecting," "being alone," and "working with what is" from my work process. The map gives an alternative impression of the island and is available for the rest of the year at Slipvillan and online for download from their website.
AIR Slipvillan worked for me as a contrast experience to the "semi-island life" on Walcheren, where I live and work. It brought obviousness to light and made me embrace the unknown, further letting go of the pressure to make work and take in the surroundings. With a rock as a substrate instead of clay below sea level.
Islands do not stand alone.
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