Visual artists' residency Erna Anema (1954) and Renate Schwarz (1956) from Haarlem concerns an art project by four Nepalese and four Dutch artists in collaboration with the De Vishal Haarlem in 2024 and the Kathmandu Triennial in 2026. Both artists have long-standing ties to Nepal. Erna Anema completed two student exchange projects between the Amsterdam Rietveld Academy and the Kathmandu University Art& Design (KUArt): NedNep I (2009) and NedNep II (2020). Anema and Schwarz are well acquainted with contemporary visual art in Nepal. The country participated in the 2022 Venice Biennale for the first time with an individual site. They decided to join forces for a NedNep III, as it were a capstone to both previous editions - not as a student project, but themselves as participating artists together with about six colleagues from Nepal and the Netherlands. The starting point became the development of the Kathmandu Valley, until about 1980 a green and fertile oasis, but now anno 2024 a metropolis of concrete and traffic arteries. Both artists chose local clay as their material, the raw material for a formerly thriving pottery industry locally, as a direct connection to the brick factories that represent urban building on former rice fields. Erna Anema and Renate Schwarz spent five and eight weeks respectively in the Kathmandu Valley working with local potters to research, prepare and produce their work.
The artists about their artist in residency:
Erna Anema:
"We worked in Thimi - a village near Bhaktapur in Nepal's Kathmandu valley - in the workshop of Dil Bahadur (Dil Ceramics') This was a particularly dusty and certainly noisy experience. We sat among Nepali women who loved listening to rock-hard Nepali music while they were busy adding ears to the twisted teacups. They were loudly commenting on the incomprehensible shapes Renate and I were fabricating - all under a sheet iron roof with the sun burning down and with glowing hot ceramic kilns next to us that were giving off their heat after firing, thus boosting the temperature in the shed even more.
Virtually all the rice land in the Kathmandu Valley has disappeared in recent decades (Burning Ricefi elds) to bricks for building houses (Urban Growth). A year ago, I spoke with Sujan Chitrakar, the director of the Nepal Art Academy (KUart) with whom, as a teacher at the Rietveld Academy, I had organized two successful student exchange projects (NedNep I and II). We got the plan to make this "a project" again, in collaboration with Nepalese artists (NedNep III).
We figured that this should not be a one-time presentation and decided that the project could become a "prelude" to the Triennial of Kathmandu to be held 2026 in Nepal: presented first in Haarlem, and then in Kathmandu. Thus a group was formed with Nepali artists Sujan Dangol, Sunita Maharjan, Kripa Tuladhar and Sagar Chetri, and here in the Netherlands with Maartje Smits, Liesbet Bussche, Renate Schwarz and myself, each approaching the same theme from their own point of view and material. I took as my starting point the rudimentary clay from the valley, Renate connected the clay to the water use in the valley. It turned out to be a "challenging" process to work with that rudimentary, original clay from the valley.
Thimi is a traditional pottery village, where in 1979 I saw that the clay was taken from the field and then kneaded - mixed with water - with bare feet, then the obtained material was put into a string press to obtain the right clay substance for the turner. A particular utensil was turned in each street. Water pitchers to carry the water that was fetched from the Hiti's - the communal watering holes - but also larger vessels that served as cisterns for water at home in the courtyard. Not only that: wash bowls, oil lamps, cooking pots of all sizes, pots for chang (local rice beer) to make and store in, or again differently shaped containers of all sizes, for making and storing yogurt. Every craftsman had learned it from his father.
On Fridays all the pots were fired together, outside on the street in 'ovens' made of large- partly the material to be baked itself: ingeniously stacked pots with straw and wood lit in between. This went on until at least the year 2000, while in the meantime a lot of things changed in the valley: slowly but surely plastic utensils were imported, from China north of Nepal, and from India from the south.
I started with the pressed discs (see image above). Because the structure of those disks reminded me of the surface of high mountain glaciers, I cut shapes from them that reminded me of that. I left other pressed circles to dry very slowly in their entirety, first under plastic, then under cotton, then in the shade before leaving them to dry further in the sun. These disks are the basis for a sculpture. The glacier forms were glazed on site, making them represent true ice forms.By Anish, the eldest son, all our actions were looked at with extreme pity. And not only him, father Dil, his younger brother and mother, the turners and the glaziers were also beating our process with sorrow: 'For those discs were far too thick to dry without cracking, let alone firing in their electric kilns,' they said. There are six kilns at Dil Ceramics. When it came time to bake the discs, it turned out that this could not be done during the day: it required too much power from the cramped power grid, then the whole neighborhood would have no power. Ok ... then in the evening and at night, but really slow firing - necessary to prevent breakage - was almost impossible because the oven temperature immediately dropped when the firing stopped. After an impressive drying and firing process, my images succeeded, despite technical obstacles and thanks to cooperation."
Renate Schwarz:
"My focus was on a pitcher. The 'pitcher of pitchers' in my eyes; made of clay, not turned but hand-built and fitting precisely at the hip, held with one hand around the neck of the pitcher.
"All pitchers were once made of clay, every street in the pottery village had its own shape. They were minute differences, but still... I didn't find a second one of those either, but I did find a variation. As Erna said, the clay has been replaced by aluminum and plastic, much lighter and less breakable. My hope was to have that one jar remade. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. Another factor I greatly admire in Nepal is the connection of tradition and modernity. While walking in the local market, I saw a pot of pottery with a plastic tap: a utensil with past and present in one.
From this I continued to work with assistant Shyam Sundar Prajapati and Dil Ceramics. We made traditional and modern faucets from clay and a greatly enlarged version of "my" jug. There were unimaginable and almost unbridgeable situations, which surprised us despite our years of experience with the culture of Nepal. We had a limited number of weeks to work, and although our arrival had been arranged well in advance and assistance had been discussed, it soon became apparent that the capacity of the workshop was tight. But true to Nepalese nature, sometimes in the nick of time, there was always a solution! I had tremendous fun with all the ups and downs, also felt at home in that tangle of 'what can be done and what cannot be done' - simply because we all put our shoulders to the wheel."
Erna Anema:
"Meanwhile, the first phase of the project, the exhibition at De Vishal in Haarlem, has been completed. Thanks to granted grants from some funds, a Nepalese artist was also able to come to the Netherlands. Now we are working towards phase 2, during the Triennial Kathmandu in February 2026. Participation in that Triennial is an excellent opportunity to further develop our work and show it in the international context of the Triennial event."
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