The award of 2020: 'You are not alone'

Guiding figures 

For the award, Suzie was inspired by the little cairns (stone piles) found in mountainous areas that serve as navigation markers where the path seems to disappear. “Those stone figures are not just guides—they also let you know that you are not alone, that people have been there before you. Sometimes, it’s hard to navigate in the art world. The cairn is a gesture of solidarity and support. That’s what I want to give to the winners with this award. For the execution of the awards, I asked Zahar Bondar to help me,” says Suzie. “I know him from the academy, and he has a furnace to melt bronze. I had never worked with bronze before.” It looks as though the stones were simply stacked on a disk of cast bronze. In reality, this disk has a rod in the middle, over which the stones were ‘strung.’ “I had to drill a hole in each stone,” Suzie explains. “And that wasn’t easy. They were really hard, and sometimes they broke spontaneously.” The top stone, like the pedestal, was cast by Suzie in bronze using a mold made from a real cobble. The other stones were found in nature. The awards are therefore all different. Suzie knows exactly where the stones come from. “An uncle of mine lives in Drenthe, and he had built a fire pit from stones found on a farmer’s land near him. He gathered the stones for me, and I also went to see them and talk to the farmer. These stones have been there since the last Ice Age.”

Living wood 

“I am exploring a different role for myself,” says Suzie. “I’m increasingly seeing myself as a mediator, for example, between material, processing, artistic intentions, audience, object, and space.” Her use of millennia-old found material for the Piket award fits with this. The processed and the unprocessed come together harmoniously. She says she would like to create more for outdoor spaces and involve living trees and plants in the process. “That also fits with the idea of being a mediator. Because trees are being felled, there is wood to work with. I wondered what it would be like to work with living wood.” To explore the possibilities, she applied for a research grant from STROOM in April. “I’m now setting up a test garden on a piece of land from my family. In a few years, I’ll be able to experiment and gain experience working with plants.”

More importantly for her development was the discovery that the Eindhoven Design Academy started a new master's course in 2019, the Geo-Design Course, led by design duo Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma. The focus of the program is on material use, the ecological aspects of design, and the relationship between design, tradition, and local culture. These are all aspects that resonate strongly with Suzie. She had already spent some time in Australia with an arborist who researched and reported on areas affected by wildfires. During that time, she became acquainted with the criteria that determine whether a tree survives or, in Suzie’s words, “becomes material.” She is also increasingly fascinated by traditional woodworking techniques, such as the joinery found in traditional Japanese architecture. Suzie has already found living space in Eindhoven and is clearly excited about this new step.

Getting to know the visitor 

For now, Suzie is still in The Hague. At the Billytown studio complex, where she has her studio, she is currently working on the Kifle the Kid Salon exhibition with Jan Dirk Adams, whom she knows from KABK. They are transforming Billytown's exhibition space into a café/salon. “Exhibition spaces are often white and empty. It’s not that I’m necessarily against that, but it can create a situation where the audience remains anonymous. By changing the function of the space, we hope to also change the interaction between objects and the audience, and through that, get to know the visitor better.” This is also connected to Suzie’s new role as a mediator, in this case between the visitor’s wishes or expectations and the exhibition space. “We hope that a dialogue will emerge, making authorship more open. The individual signature of the artist sometimes gets lost, but I’m not bothered by that.” From mid-August, the exhibition will be open to the public on an event-based basis. Starting in September, it will be open Thursdays through Saturdays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM. “Anyone who wants can approach us to organize something in the Kifle the Kid Salon. It can be a private or public event. Based on the type of event, we write scripts for performative interventions.” Additionally, Suzie is participating in the group exhibition Achtung! Spielplatz! which will be on view until August 2 at the De Vishal gallery in Haarlem.

Text: Anna Beerens