Room of Looking

[narrator]: The paintings by Rosa Loy often seem to come straight out of a dream or fairy tale. They are realistic, but at the same time alienating. For Rosa, her artworks are like diaries. She uses them to process feelings and express emotions.

The first work that the Drents Museum bought from Rosa is the painting Substanzen. What is this artwork about, and what emotion does she convey here? We talk about it in her studio in Leipzig.

[Rosa Loy]: I started this painting in the early spring, in the end of the winter time, and I want to make a painting with longing for spring. So I use a very bright color. This is the orange in this time, and I also want to make a painting that reminds me of a garden and a forest. So I also think, how can I do something that looks a little bit like a forest and a garden in between.

A painting for me is always like a diary. I'm not so good at writing diaries, but it's like a painting. Or painting a diary is much easier for me because I'm thinking in pictures, and in my mind I remember snapshots. You have two kinds of people. One is thinking in words, and the other in painting.

I have an idea, but in between the painting always says, you have to change this, and this, and this. And if I start it until a certain moment, then I come in in the morning and the painting says, come here please, look this corner. It's not nice. It's like a ping-pong play.

This is quite hard to stop. It's more easy to start a painting than to stop. It's possible to overpaint it if you make too much. That's the problem. It sometimes happens, but if you have a long year of practice, it doesn't happen.

All the paintings, personally, I'm a very subjective painter. I paint only what's in my mind, what's in my emotions, what's me. Sometimes also what's in my body. I had a broken hand two years ago, and this was a painting. I have to make a painting about this. It's always very personal.

I love it when it's going outside. That's the best what's happened to a painting. It makes me happy. If I make a painting that should bring good vibrations to the people, and I love if people tell me what they see in this painting. There are always other stories. I only make the painting. I'm not a meaning teacher. I only can make an offer. I can make an offer, and they can jump in. It's like a glass of water. You can drink it or not.  Not everybody has to like my emotions. That's not me. This is a painting. It's not personal.

We have a world with a lot of ugly things, and I want to bring some beauty in the world. I was trained to have no fear as a kid, and at the moment, it's a lot of fear in the world. Don't waste your time with fear.
 

[narrator]: This dubbing has been created with AI. Everyone experiences art differently. It depends, for example, on your experiences, memories or feelings.

Jozua and Nanoah have differing perspectives on the artworks here in the museum. Both of them offer their own personal perspective on the art of Atousa Bandeh. Do you share their viewpoint or do you perceive something entirely different? Let's take a moment to observe alongside them.

[Nanoah]: I see a lot of pink. It seems like it's portraying something floral. I see pink cars, which initially don't stand out as cars, but look more like something else to me. But they are recurring everywhere and I see, I think it's intended, female faces or female figures or beings and some sort of very large red chair that stands somewhat prominently there. I find it a bit misplaced in the work. Yeah, that's what I initially see.

[Jozua]: I also notice a lot of details. I see the cars and on the right, I see something that looks like a sort of universe. You see that?

[Nanoah]: Yeah.

[Jozua]: With the pink and blue. It feels like a kind of crib as well, like you've smoked a really fat spliff.

[Nanoah]: Yeah, or LSD or something.

[Jozua]: Yeah, making you say, wow, I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I find it mostly very abundant and I find it beautiful and very detailed, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It seems like some sort of other universe.

[Nanoah]: Yeah, I recognize that. It's a bit overwhelming. There's a lot going on and all those black things, what are they? Butterflies? It's so much that I didn't even notice it at first because it's so integrated into the work. But now I see it and I think there's quite a lot of black, maybe a bit too much for my taste.

[Jozua]: I also see a sort of, do you see that woman on the right or young lady? Sort of blue. It almost seems like an energy source.

[Nanoah]: Kind of aura-like presence.

[Jozua]: I'm not sure if that's intentional. So the artist is a Dutch lady from Iran. When I look at it now, the lady in the middle has short hair. I know in certain places they're not allowed to show their hair. So perhaps it's cut short in protest and perhaps it symbolizes that. Perhaps that's why there are also black circles, because it still has a dark edge.

[Nanoah]: That could indeed be very well possible and intended. That infinity in that black in some places. Especially for example at the bottom where those cars are. A sort of black triangle pointing up seems very infinite or something. Like they're going to drive into something they won't come out of. But that red chair is still untrue to me. 
[Jozua]: I also don't understand that.

[Nanoah]: To me that chair just seems to be there and it's also proportionally different from the rest. Especially if you look at such a small car and then such a gigantic chair. What strikes me is that it's red and that signals to me, be careful, danger, those kinds of feelings. So it seems like something scary rather than a cheerful chair to sit on.

[Jozua]: Yeah, the red chair is very much present. Like you said, it seems out of place. Maybe the artist also wants to portray that. Yeah, the red chair might represent oppression.

[Nanoah]: And it strikes me that one of the characters in his work also wears a red garment on the right side. The one with that blueish aura in the middle also wears a sort of red dress. But it also looks a bit like blood which sort of flows downwards. If you look under the dress there's a sort of line going down. So it actually seems to symbolize something unpleasant, something painful.

[Jozua]: Well you see, I myself make music. I started with rap, hip-hop. Hip-hop is actually a culture. It's much more than just rap. And at some point when I started making music that's when the new wave emerged. That's the new school hip-hop. And I noticed a sort of conflict between them and the old school hip-hop hats, so to speak.

They didn't understand what the new generation was up to. While hip-hop actually stands for development. And I didn't understand it either until my mother told me art always moves you. And then I started listening to the new school hip-hop. And then I thought, what makes this so cool? It's the beats, the melodies and now I'm fully with it. And I see it as a kind of abstract art. In the past I thought I can do that too, easy. But you can't. Try it. That's how I now see new school hip-hop. And that's how this might also be interpreted.

Although I must say this is very difficult to make. This painting is not something of which you think I can also do this. But that it's art, I'm convinced of that. Because it does move you. Art makes you think or moves you. It gives you a certain feeling.

[Nanoah]: In Iran, it's not always easy to be a woman. And this artist was born in Iran. I'm not a woman myself. But I do know what it's like to be in a country of origin. Or at least my father's country. That's also partly my country. To have a hard time being who you are. As I myself, I am non-binary and queer. And in Nigeria, where I partly come from, there's still a prison sentence for that. And in the north, even the death penalty. So I also know what it's like to be unsafe there. And not to be able to be or allowed to be yourself.

So in that sense, I think I can recognize myself in the artist's work. Because the painting in the middle, where we seem to see a woman partly hidden behind something that could look like bars. You notice oppression and suppression in his portrait. Also in the way she almost looks outside. Like, take me away from here. I don't want to be here. Or I can't be here. She doesn't look very cheerful. She actually looks quite well. There's a hint of sadness in being there, behind the bars. And I can somewhat recognize that.

[Jozua]: Art moves me. Or art moves us. And upon closer inspection, I really see it as... I can also very much relate to your story, by the way. This lady also doesn't look very cheerful. But I really see it as a great universe. Actually, her universe. Now she sees this, and there's another universe on the right side. At the top is also another universe. The cars probably represent infinity that keeps driving constantly. And I see a lot of female faces. A lot of butterflies. But I still wonder about the red chair.

[Nanoah]: The red chair remains a mystery.
 

[Narrator]: This dubbing has been created with AI. Sometimes they almost seem to come to life. The glossy ceramic sculptures by Carolein Smit.

With their vibrant colors, captivating emotions and unique textures, Carolein's sculptures are easily recognizable. However, not everyone finds them beautiful. Some people even consider the works kitsch.

The Drents Museum owns several pieces by Carolein, but perhaps one of the most remarkable is the Drenthe Heath Sheep and the Girl of Yde. We discuss this work and her experiences as an artist in her studio at her home.

[Carolein Smit]: I must honestly say that I am not very concerned with the audience. What always drives me to create the work is my own fascination with it, my own story.

The Drenthe Heath Sheep is the pride of Drenthe, with those beautiful curled horns and also the markings of the sheep, with a bit of black in it, a pinkish beige nose. It's a beautiful sheep, but she was excavated in the peatbog, the Girl of Yde. She's also somewhere in a display case in the Drents Museum as a bog body.

The question is, what's going on with the sheep? It's sitting on its backside with its front legs up and she is supporting it. But the odd thing is, because she has those skeletal legs, she wouldn't be able to support such a heavy sheep. And in the construction of the sculpture, which you don't see on the outside, but in the construction on the inside, it's all one piece. The sheep and the girl and her little legs, they're kind of just there for show. But the construction in the sculpture is connected from the sheep to the girl's head.

In some elements, there's also a difference in attention to detail. You have the skin and wool of the sheep, which is made very precise and very detailed. And that little hand of hers, which is lovingly holding the sheep, is made in little clay clumps. And if you look closely, you can see that too. It hardly has the shape of a bone, but it has all the essence which makes it look like bone.

I'm always incredibly focused on beauty. I'm a sucker for beauty, they sometimes say. I think the color of a sculpture has to be right. The texture and tactility of the sculpture have to be good. That's just how I always look at detail here in the studio. I try to set the details against each other in the most exciting ways. I always find the fact that, you know, it will end one day. That's where the zest for life begins. You shouldn't waste days. You should work, live, do everything you want to do and not postpone it. Because it will end one day.

There are very few who fall in between, who say, yeah, I think Smith's work is all right. Most people either find it beautiful or reject it outright. It can go in different directions. There are also people who think the work tends towards kitsch. That's also something that a lot of people can't deal with.

Whereas I always think, what's wrong with that? They tend to say it's too beautiful or all that gold. Then I always think, all right, but what's wrong with that? Well, it has to be stripped down or art has to be boring or incomprehensible. I often get really bored in museums, you know, in the Museum of Modern Art. I really think… ugh. 
In my studio, I'm not concerned with how people will perceive my work. I'm only concerned with something I always call very private, which is my fascination, my story. If an artwork has been approved by me to go out into the world, then people can also have their own story with it. Everyone can think what they want.
 

[narrator]: This dubbing has been created with AI. Enchanting figures and objects in symbolic realms. This describes the work of Atousa Bandeh in a nutshell. At the age of 19, the artist fled from Iran to the Netherlands, where she uses art to process her feelings and experiences.

As a result, her artworks often narrate personal stories. The Drents Museum owns one of her works, called Requiem for the Beggar Mother. She created the painting based on one of her journeys to her native country of Iran. We discuss this work and her experiences as an artist in her studio.

[Atousa Bandeh]: I see a roundabout in the center of the painting, which also sort of symbolizes a black hole. There you can see the figure of a veiled woman carrying a child on her back, circling the roundabout.

Throughout the backdrop, you can see my own face, a sort of tranquil face that is printed multiple times. In the middle, you have the painting, which is an actual canvas that is placed on top of the drawing, so on the paper itself. That painting is a portrait of me, looking through a hatch.

I can elaborate on this painting a little bit more. It was also about my role as a mother and being confronted with a begging woman on the streets. And then I thought about what is my position. I am also a mother, and how painful it must be putting my child on my back and start begging on the street. So that was the starting point of this drawing.

The patterns that occur throughout the entire painting are butterflies. And because I was driven by a sense of empathy, not pity, for the woman begging, I felt compelled to create a painting for her. And that's how this painting came to be. It's a kind of tribute, but at the same time, a requiem.

During the creation, you develop a connection with the artwork, and when it's gone, you feel its absence. It's sort of like your love child, of course. There are two aspects to it.

You build a certain relationship with your artwork, and other people feel a completely different connection to your artwork. It's not that you don't want them to have that connection, but it's more like you have to set your love child free.

I fled during the Iran-Iraq war in 1989. My primary reason for fleeing was the fact that I was not allowed to continue my studies. I had finished high school, and I wasn't admitted to university because I didn't meet the ideological requirements. And I was a member of a political party that wasn't allowed to exist.

It was very difficult to have to flee as a young person. Emigrating is already difficult. Relocating yourself is already difficult. But having to flee is many times harder.

Right after graduating from the art academy, I started working abstractly. Why? Because I really couldn't communicate. It was very difficult to actually express myself. I spoke Dutch and English, but communicating effectively was very hard for me. So then I opted for abstraction, because when you talk about abstraction, you're talking about darkness, light, contrast, composition, and no longer about the narrative, the story. But a few years later, I noticed that the stories I carried with me started to weigh heavier and heavier on me, that it left me no choice. I had to tell these stories.

I don't believe there's a wrong way to look at an artwork. You can approach a piece of artwork incorrectly, but you cannot look at it wrong, because you cannot easily influence your eyes. They see what they see, so you cannot look at it incorrectly. But it's more about how open to its interpretation are you.

That's the actual way of truly looking at a piece of artwork. If you're open to setting aside your personal taste, setting aside the fact that you might not understand it and still look at it, then I think that with every interaction with the artwork, at least something happens. So you can never look at it wrong.
 

Here are tactile objects that you can touch.

In front of you are three glazed ceramic discs that measure approximately 25 centimetres in diameter. They were made by Carolein Smit. You can feel various textures on the discs, some of which are also found in the sculpture ‘Drenthe Heath Sheep with Yde Girl’. Smit made this sculpture especially for the Drents Museum in 2017. The discs are fragile so explore them very carefully with your hands. Follow the forms and structures and discover what they depict with the help of this audio.

We start with the disc on the left. On it is the hand of a skeleton, holding a flower. The background is dark brown and has small indentations. The hand clasps the flower with bent beige fingerbones. The flower stem, with a long narrow leaf on both sides, is dark green with light blue parts. At the top of the stem is a single flower with pink, purple and blue petals that emanate from the bud like a fan.

On the middle disc you can feel a texture of numerous small droplets that seem to leak out of the disc. The base of the disc is bright red, and the droplets are beige with dark red spots. The droplets follow the curvature of the disc and are packed closely together in a random yet semi-organised fashion. 

The third disc features the leg of a sheep, surrounded by its curly fleece. You can feel the sheep’s bent knee protruding from the bottom of the disc. The animal’s shin lies along the edge of the disc and curves upwards again towards the hoof. On the side of the leg and above the hoof are shorter, almost spiky hairs. Around the leg are long tufts of wool, twisted together into thick curly strands that give the fleece a playful quality.

The sculpture ‘Drenthe Heath Sheep with Yde Girl’, from which these discs are derived, is 85 centimetres high. It depicts a sheep sitting on the ground with its body upright. The sheep leans against a white girl, who wraps her arms around it and looks straight ahead with a resigned look. The girl’s arms, hands and legs are merely bones, and her feet resemble the sheep’s hooves. She wears grey rags and has long wavy reddish blonde hair.

The sheep is mostly white but has a black head with white ears and snout. Its head rests against the girl’s belly. Its fleece is made up of long curly strands of wool. The girl holds on to the sheep’s black front legs, which are tucked against its chest. 

This is a scent point. Here you can smell a scent.

If you could smell art, would this be the scent of this work of art by Carolein Smit? Certainly not a pleasant, fresh aroma, but one reminiscent of a sheep pen. This is not surprising, considering that the ceramic piece depicts a Drenthe heath sheep alongside a girl whose limbs are made of bones – some still baring a bit of meat. In reality, that combination would likely not smell very nice either. 


 

This is a core object. You can listen to information here. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to touch this object.

Right in front of you is a painting that is 1.5 meters high and 1 meter wide. It was made by Rosa Loy, in 2019, who entitled it ‘Substanzen’, German for Substances. She used casein paint on canvas. Casein is a paint based on egg and pigment. It produces bright and matte colours, in this painting mainly various shades of orange-red. The lower left corner and bottom of the painting is dominated by an orange shape resembling a fat cat's tail. A similar shape, but then upright, can be found along the edge of the painting on the right. 

The painting shows two female figures in a fairy-like, somewhat mysterious setting. One has a pale white hue, the other is slightly yellow. It looks like they’re sitting in a tree. The figures are sitting opposite each other. The woman on the left is wearing dark red trousers and a matching top with a white collar. On her head she has a dark red cap with two extensions reminiscent of those on a foolscap. Her blond hair, tied in a bun, sticks out from under the hat. With her hands in front of her chest she is playing with a string, holding it in the shape of an hourglass. The stool she is sitting on is part of the wooden hut that seems to be built in a tree.

Opposite her, the other figure is painted in a squatting pose. She is wearing red boots, red trousers and a bright red shirt with long sleeves. She, too, has a red cap on her head, this one more elf-like. A long, blond ponytail hangs straight down her back. With her right hand she is holding on to a branch. In her left hand she is holding a loop of string hanging down in the shape of the number eight. She is looking down at it.

Next to the string, between the feet of both ladies, there is a kind of see-through opening to the ground below, where a tiny house with a yellow roof and green walls can be seen. Inside the house there are two human figures, as well as four loops of string hanging in a figure eight shape over the handrail of the veranda.  

In the upper right corner, in the distance, there is a small orange house surrounded by trees and bushes. A path runs from behind the tree house up to the house in the upper right corner.

Loy painted this work in early spring, when she spent a lot of time working in her garden and wanted to capture that atmosphere. The warm colours in the painting were inspired by the colours she encountered in her garden.

 
Loy uses her paintings as a kind of diary to express her emotions. However, she also deliberately creates a mystical atmosphere in her works, as evidenced by this painting. It’s far from clear what is going on: What are these women doing? What is happening in the background? It's all pretty mysterious.