The beautiful ones are not yet born.
By John Dunkelgrün.
At the Victor Laurentius Gallery in the main square of the New Babylon Shopping Center, you’ll find a small but remarkable exposition:
“Broadening Horizons: Perspectives on Departure” by the artistic couple Anna Kurtycz and RUDEK.
The exposition was opened by Ms. Mette Gonggrijp, Director of the Sub-Saharan Africa desk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs., who emphasised the importance of art as a medium of communication.
Anna Kurtycz (Mexico 1970) is a master woodcutter who has ventured successfully into engraving, photography, video installations and street art. She likes scenes from daily life, especially how people interact in crowds. RUDEK (The Netherlands 1975) is an artist who likes to focus on the individuals in a crowd. The tension between the individual and the masses is where their common work touches.
RUDEK is a diplomat in the Dutch Foreign Service and the couple has spent seven years in Africa, in Ghana and Benin. In both places Anna set up her studio, not just to work herself, but to interact with local population (children and adults) with whom she organised art classes and art activities. She also participated with her studio several times in Ghana’s main street Art Festival. In all the cases the interaction with local population was a great source of inspiration, not just for her, but for everyone around her.
The work they made in Africa was directed by social issues, women, the tension between races, corruption and migration. It is this last issue that was the start of the current exposition, looking at migration not from the outside in seeing victims, but from the inside out. They look at individuals, strong people who gathered the courage and had the strength to leave a place without future in search for a new world, where they could live and bring up a family in peace and security.
You will find portraits of strong women, the imaginary wall these migrants have to scale and a busy port. Anna discovered that, during the migration of ancient Aztecs from Aztlán (Northwest of Mexico) to Tenochtitlan (Todays Mexico City), they were confronted to a similar situation that migrants face today while going to USA. She used the same iconography of Aztec codex to describe today’s problem. Plus que ça change …
Don’t miss this exposition UNTIL NOVEMBER 4th. Open weekdays from 10.00 ~ 19.00, Saturday 10.00 to 18.00, Sunday 10.00 to 17.00.
