The following video portret was made by Roel van Tour, interview Maarten Westerveen, concept by Koehorst in 't Veld for Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie during early stages of my research:
In the following talk show on Representation within audiovisual design practices, I was asked about my project a year in. At Dutch Design Week 2021, moderated by Nelly Dos Reis for Stimuleringsfonds:
TOKO WAAR IS THUIS (2020–ongoing)
Research project and artistic archive
How can you circumvent the arrow of progress thinking in a whitewashed past?
Here, the imagery of my family's toko becomes a lens to challenge linear histories.
What I previously knew about my Indo background, I learned from my father, who himself had been torn from his roots in his teenage years. He turned into an eccentric man who ultimately embraced his otherness in the east of the Netherlands. He kept his Indo identity together through improvisation, fantasy and showmanship within his small exotic supermarket, a toko. There he wrapped customers around his fingers with charm and beautiful stories, introducing many new spices into a Dutch kitchen. I grew up in that toko. Filled with stories that were not quite true, but carried a poetic quality and needed to be read between the lines. They reveal a longing. Greedy for more.
Now I do something similar to my father. But instead of products and spices, I use moving images and voice as a means to interpret a faded past, bringing it into the conversation and the present here. I collect stories, artifacts, fragments, symbols, clues in nature and archives, remnants and floating feelings. With these I feed an ecosystem-like structure from which I draw essayistic video work and installations.
In the newest research phase, the scope is shifting in two directions. One towards questioning origin narratives implemented by the oppressor and a shape-shifting ancestral mother. The second zooms out from rediscovered ancestral values towards systemic deconstruction—using the toko as a microcosm to critique the global imbalance in quality, the exploitation of natural resources, cheap nature, and neo-colonial, late-stage capitalistic logistics.
Over the years supported by:
Stimuleringsfonds voor de Creatieve Industrie
Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid
KF Hein fonds