Kimberly Clark (a collective consisting of Josepha de Jong, Ellemieke Schoenmaker, and Iris van Dongen) evokes a world of parties and nocturnal misbehaviour. Scenes from her life are represented in sculptures and installations, which revolve around a female figure – a self-portrait? Kimerly Clark manipulated the exhibition space into a three-dimensional account of her struggle in and with a complex world. Their ‘Crusade, Rotterdam’ was a mountain of waste from a renovation project that is being scaled by two women. The image is provocative, theatrical, and energetic. Yet the mountain of debris looks uncontrollable and the women are frozen in what appears to be an endless ascent. Moving between hilarity and fury, the works speak out on issues such as identity and (constructed) image.
Fashion designer Monique van Heist makes designs for fictional characters such as Tina, Kim and Toni. These are people who do not necessarily comply with the standard ideas of what should constitute masculine or feminine, successful or unsuccessful. Like Clive, a homeless person, not necessarily someone you would associate with innovative fashion. And yet Clive has a wardrobe that enables him to cope with the outside world, a dress code that helps to pull him through.
In installations and photo series Cora Roorda van Eijsinga explored the border between authentic identity and pigeonhole label. Many of her works revolve around standard female roles: woman as seductress, as daughter, as subordinate to men. The photo series ‘Something Shifted Ever So Slightly’, made in collaboration with photographer Judith van IJken, is a portrait of the ’everyday life’ of an anonymous woman. The images search for the border between role-playing and reality.
Lydia Schouten, the grande dame of Dutch video and performance art, showed her pioneering work from the 1980s. She was one of the first to use the video camera and have her alter ego bring role patterns and traditions up for discussion in her films. In a period when image creation was beginning to be strongly influenced by the mass media, Schouten created her own counter image. Lydia Schouten is essentially a true storyteller, in a visual language that appears to emanate from fantasy, but always with a socially oriented undertone. Sometimes parodying, then serious again, Schouten makes it clear that stereotypes are there to be broken.