Jan van Eyck Open Studio’s: EUROPE STARTS HERE

From 9 till 11 March 2017 the Jan van Eyck Open Studio’s took place. During the Open Studio’s I presented a structure with the exact same measurements as the “Better Shelter,” a refugee tent developed in 2010 by the IKEA Foundation in collaboration with the UNHCR Refugee Agency. This structure was the context for the reading performance “Europe Starts Here” that took place every two hours. While the reading continued the structure would gradually be closed with flags, including the people that chose to be inside, and excluding those who chose to be outside.

“Europe Starts Here” explores the spatial and cultural expressions that shape the image of Europe. Today cultural highlights such as the Acropolis are presented as an essential aspect of the ‘European identity’. But for whom is this European identity created? Tourists, refugees, global shoppers, stateless persons and other adventurers, as travelers they arrive at the same borders and stopover in the same cities with an equal fascination for their destination, Europe, even though they are welcomed quite differently.

“Europe Starts Here” takes on a Grand Tour moving through different places, historical developments and current events that look into the way Europe deals with questions of identity, citizenship, culture and history in the context of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The main question that underlies this tour is whether the tourist and the heritage site, the refugee and the camp are not both a result of the same paradigm. Tourist and refugee, in most respects they seem to be opposites, but what do they have in common?

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Participants Open Studios 2017:

Abla elBahrawy (EG/NL), Albergo Rosa (BE/NO), Alessandra Covini (IT), Anna Reutinger (US), Anneke Brassinga (NL), Bregje Hofstede (NL), Christine Bax (NL), Christine Verheyden (BE), Daan Gielis (BE), Damon Zucconi (US), Dear Hunter (NL/BE), Dimitrios Rentoumis (GR/NL), Eloise Sweetman (AU/NL), Fabio Roncato (IT), Fazed Grunion, Grace Schwindt (DE), Hannes Bernard & Guido Giglio (ZA/NL & BR/NL), Imran Channa (PK), Iván Martínez López (MX), Jessica Segall (US), Johanna Binder (AT), Ju Hyun Lee (KR), Julie van der Vaart (NL), Junsheng Zhou (CN), Katrin Kamrau (DE), Kristina Benjocki (RS/SI), Lena Bergendahl (SE), Lilian Kreutzberger (NL), Lucia Prancha (PT), Marco Balesteros (PT), Maria Pääkkönen (FI), Matthew C. Wilson (US), Meri Linna (FI), Mustafa Stitou (NL), Orr Menirom (IL), Paoletta Holst, Pieter van der Schaaf (NL), Radna Rumping (NL), Raewyn Martyn (NZ), Rosan Hollak (NL), Santiago F Mosteyrín (ES/NL), Simon Wald-Lasowski (FR/NL), Sol Archer (UK/NL), Tim Hollander (NL), Viktorija Rybakova (LT)

From 9 to 11 March 2017 all the studio doors in the Van Eyck (Maastricht, the Netherlands), were open for the annual Open Studio’s.

The participating artists, designers, architects and curators displayed the results of their residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy in their studio’s and other locations throughout and beyond the building.