A mental geography
‘‘wordless heights’ is a memory in the form of a memory of a landscape that I have never seen, but which was supposedly travelled and wandered through by a person.
The Indonesian art critic Aminudin TH. Siregar talks in various texts and essays about the association-stimulating qualities of Sumatra’s mountain ranges.
I wandered through the stories of the family histories of the Batak, the indigenous people of Sumatra. Many images and longings of a strange, different life were evoked in me, which made me linger there again and again, both physically and emotionally.
A secluded, silent world, completely free and clear.
Beautiful, gentle terraces; soft light with clear or hazy, moist, warm air lies on the heights of the landscapes told, which have the golden ratio hidden within them.
I have constructed my own little Sumatra in a ‘travelling suitcase’.
In the object is my longing for the other place, as well as a place that can itself be understood as a travelling landscape.
The form is reminiscent of both a kidney-shaped container and a violin case. When opened, it shows the mountains cut out of the carpet.
Positive and negative mountains interlock precisely. A form that opens up to reveal its own inner shape. Closed, the landscape becomes a compact, silent block again, a retreating longing…… ready to travel.