alongerread

There are busts of men at the Scheepvaartkwartier which is a neighborhood in Rotterdam, Netherlands. These men are named after the people who added to the prosperity of the city. I created a dialogue with the integration of latex as blindfolds and the busts of these men which were context-responsive and site-specific. The power structures that existed when these men contributed prosperity to Rotterdam gives an understanding of resistance today. There are many commemorative statues of men from the colonial era– an era where The Netherlands grew and undertook to control culturally distinct societies and when women were heavily oppressed. Public monuments and statues carry meaning and symbolism within the depths of collective memory. In general, it goes to say that history is written by the winners and this is also parallel to public art, which is often depicted as an official form of cultural expression. More so than not, these monuments and statues are associated with the honouring of these victors in history. Public art was always a useful tool for hierarchical power to depict a palpable representation of truth, to portray a past that conforms to the visions for the conditions today. When commemorative statues such as these are on display, in a place like The Scheepvaartkwartier, one of the richest areas in The Netherlands, it raises questions. In this text I will break apart these complicated statues’ narratives and ideologies. A narrative is a representation of a situation to reflect or conform to an overarching set of aims or values. An ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

The Stichting Beeldengroep Scheepvaartkwartier decided to establish a group of sculptures in The Scheepvaartkwartier. In 2011, Robbert Jan Donker, an artist from Rotterdam, made a bronze bust of Dr. Elie van Rijckevorsel. After that, there was a plan to make more statues of eminent Rotterdammers that lived in the vicinity of the area. Paul van de Laar, a director of Museum Rotterdam selected Daniël George van Beuningen (1877 - 1955), Louis Jamin (1881 - 1953), Anthony van Hoboken (1756 - 1850) and Marten Mees (1828 - 1917). These five Rotterdammers all came from wealthy families and were either shipowners, bankers, scholars, benefactors or industrialists. Together they represent the people who have brought prosperity to Rotterdam.

Dr. Elie van Rijckevorsel was a scientist and an academic. During his life he travelled all over the world. On his journeys to the Dutch East Indies – today’s Indonesia – Brazil and South Africa, he accumulated a large collection of artistic and ethnographic artefacts. Elie van Rijckevorsel was one of the founding fathers of the Wereldmuseum. He left the museum with more than 900 objects. When he came back from his travels he had a collection of Javanese batiks, weapons, headdresses, jewellery, valuable textiles and batiks of which he exhibited on the upper floor of the Yachtclub building at Willemskade. In 1883, his collection of batiks, brought together, formed the core of the East Indies Textiles Collection that was presented at the International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam where 28 different nations exhibited their wealth and colonial trade. Subsequently, his collection was given to the Ethnographic Museum in Rotterdam. There were many objects brought back to the Netherlands and now these objects are in most cases never returned to their rightful owners or countries of origin. A spotlight on how private collectors such as Van Rijckevorsel actually obtained these objects is much needed. The extensive presence of cultural and historical objects in both public and private collections inside the countries of the former European colonists raises some serious questions. For example, in the 1970s, there were a few colonial cultural objects returned to Indonesia, but after that nothing happened, even though Indonesia and other former colonies have been up front about their longings for objects that should be their principal beneficiaries to return.

Furthermore, there is was Elie van Rijckevorsel men’s room at the Wereld museum that was the former meeting place of the Yacht Club back in the colonial era. Thankfully they recently changed it to gender neutral. This men’s room is paneled with wood from a Thai ship. The fact that they used Van Rijckevorsel to name a men’s room– a room that excludes women during present day time gives an indication to the meanings people have attached to Van Rijckevorsel’s name and the things they use it to represent today as a wealthy Caucasian man from the colonial era. The fact that they panelled the room with wood from a Thai ship on top of this suggests the exoticism of South-East Asian countries. This appears to be a case of Orientalism, a term put forward by Edward Said’s postcolonial theory in 1978 to describe the Western attitude towards Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. In this critical work Said examines the way the West views these societies as underdeveloped and static, resulting in a conception that the culture can be portrayed and reproduced to serve imperial power.

Daniël George van Beuningen was a well known celebrity throughout the whole of The Netherlands and was perceived as the richest person in the port city at the time. His family dominated the business of transporting coal and various other goods. Van Beuningen was also a compulsive art collector. Only recently has the information of the extent of Beungingen’s interactions with the occupiers come to the surface. During the second world war, he traded classical works of art stolen from Jewish people and sold them to the Nazis via Hans Posse who was a representative of Adolf Hitler whose job was to expand the collection of paintings and other art objects. Ronny Naftaniel, a son of a German Jew who survived the Holocaust is a longtime head of the Centrum Informatie and Dokumentatie Israël, the local organization fighting anti-Semitism and a former spokesman of the Dutch Jewish community. He has fought for the removal of Van Beuningen’s name from the museum but has not been successful so far. The museum also still owns the looted works and profusely refuses to return them. There is also an ongoing legal process demanding the return of the looted pieces but the Dutch courts have up until now, rejected the heirs’ demands. In January 1941, there was an accounting irregularity during the annual audit of the Dutch Port authority and the accountant refused to approve the figures. There was a shortage of a million guilders, the equivalent of 20 million euros today and Van Beuningen admitted that he used this money for art acquisitions for Hitler, Goering and others. His brother-in-law and cousin wanted to report the theft on behalf of the company but because of his money and power he only had to step down as director of The Steenkolen Handels Vereniging (SVH) and the affiliated ones. He was banned from entering any of the offices and in return they would not report him to the authorities. During his life he also gave several of his collections away to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and so they named the museum after him. It’s almost as if collectors like Van Beuningen wanted to collect art so that their names could live on for eternity– and they know that art museums can facilitate that.

Antony Van Hoboken owned the largest sailing fleet in the Netherlands and invested in numerous other businesses. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, he saw sailing to Asia as a business opportunity. Despite the demand for European goods among the growing settler population, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had never put much effort into eastbound trade. In 1789 Van Hoboken loaded ships for the Indies with a wide variety of consumer goods. As the Dutch East India Company lost its grip on trade, there was also more room for return freight and so he found a market for exotic animals, in which he supplied all kinds of birds, monkeys, elephants, rhinos and more. These animals were heavily exploited and received a larger commercial and political interest. To possess live exotic animals was an indication of status as they embodied wealth and power that extended to exotic and distant lands. Animals were a commodity made possible by Van Hoboken as the Dutch ventured to the Dutch Indies. The commercial demand was characterised by a civic, republican pride and a society that was not very empathetic with the suffering of animals. Some animals could endure the stress of being confined in a small space on a moving ship for months and others were not able to. Primary sources show little to no evidence that VOC servants on sea or land and Dutch civilians in towns had sympathy for the animals that suffered immensely and or died in their hands. They appreciated the animals for the economic value and admired their exoticness but there was no engagement in the animal as a being that could feel pain. This general lack of empathy comes from the philosophical notion or dogma that Descartes put forward that they had the right to exploit animals as they see fit. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Dutch demand for exotic animals began to include the Amsterdam bourgeoisie. The arrivals of exotic animals in Dutch harbours stimulated a commercial demand. With a capital of one million guilders, Van Hoboken’s company had reached the Dutch trade top around 1830. In order to acquire further social prestige, he bought for a quarter of a million guilders, the Rhoon Castle, located south of Rotterdam, with the accompanying manor of Rhoon and Pendrecht. The newly established landowner was so proud of the title acquired with this purchase that he presented himself as ‘Anthony van Hoboken, Lord van Rhoon and Pendrecht’. The last two men’s biographies that I will mention are Louis Jamin and Marten Mees who were not as prominent as the other three men. Louis Jamin was a business icon. He was the enterprising son of Cornelis who expanded the company and named it after the family name. Louis worked for a long time as director in the company, Jamin and ensured that the number of stores in the Netherlands increased from 50 in 1907 to approximately 550 stores in 1953. Jamin is one of the corporate icons belonging to the list of Rotterdam companies.15 Marten Mees was the co-founder of Rotterdamsche Bank, now part of ABN AMRO bank. He was a banker and an urban financial intermediary. He renovated the harbor and made it more accessible. He was involved in public housing, the founding of the Savings Bank, the Rotterdam Leeskabinet. He had a political significance and his role within the Chamber of Commerce.

To create a dialogue with these busts, latex was used as a medium. It is extracted from rubber trees but the trees are not cut down when harvested. To cultivate latex, a rubber tapper would take away a layer of bark on the trunk of the tree and if done right the latex would be yielded for up to five hours. Rubber tappers take what the tree has to offer and then leave it to re-heal before tapping it again. Latex is a sustainable alternative to animal and petroleum-based materials. It used to have many shocking fetichistic associations but it’s meanings are changing. It is now often celebrated with hypervisibility in art and fash - ion when it used to be regarded as something that needed secrecy and censorship. On the other hand, slaughter tapping denotes the tapping done in the late nineteenth century in Congo to extract substantial amounts of latex. The second king of Belgium, King Leopold II, owned the Congo Free State as a private enterprise and systematically exploited the native population for the production of rubber for profit. To enforce the rubber quotas, as a matter of policy the colonists would decapitate the limbs of the natives. The intense drive to collect latex from wild plants was responsible for the many barbaric acts committed under the Con - go Free State. To extract the rubber, Congolese workers would lather their bodies with latex, which hardened and was painfully scraped off the skin. This latex was obtained from a wild species of vines, namely the Landolphia. Unlike rubber from other places, which comes from trees, this type of rubber cannot be cultivated. Today, commercial latex sheeting is derived from the rubber tree, hevea brasiliensis, which is native to Brazil and which is grown in plan - tations in South America, west Africa and south-east Asia.

Latex resembles skin. In this work, it is used to represent the feminine skin. To create these blindfolds, it was slathered onto flat surfaces to create latex sheets which makes them appear like slabs of textured flayed skin that has a supple glow, giving it a humanistic quality. Latex conforms to the surface it is smeared upon, consequently making the perfect copy–an imitation of the object it was resting upon but deprived of a form of its own. Putting aside the satisfaction from making new fleshy forms from liquid latex, there is also much difficulty. It is very time consuming as there is a waiting time between applying the many layers. Whilst waiting for it to dry, there is also an obligation to ensure particles do not get onto the liquid latex. The odour is very overwhelming due to the fumes from the ammonia. Once there are enough layers applied and the latex is at least 2mm thick, there is a waiting time of 48 hours to properly handle the latex due to its stickiness. It will stick to surfaces, picking up particles or fold onto itself, making it very difficult to pick apart without ripping. The process of latex making could be comparable to conformity into new cultures or institutions. The white liquid form seeks structure and support in its vulnerable state and then fully solidifies into the material it would inevitably become through air exposure.

A crucial part of the narrative of these statues is that, ‘five female distant descendants of these men were asked to officially unveil the sculptures in May 2013.’ The fact that five female distant descendants were asked to officially unveil the sculptures of men that were alive around 200 years ago reinforces the idea that opportunities and wealth are bound to family names and inheritance and it reinforces exclusivity and traditions.

A comprehension of the history and politics of the area where the busts are established is essential in my attempt to destabilize these busts’ dominant narratives and ideologies with the latex. The Scheepvaartkwartier, also known as Nieuwe Werk is a neighborhood in Rotterdam on the banks of the Nieuwe Maas. Around 1840 , Rotterdam started a largescale urban expansion towards the west and The Scheepvaartkwartier was also enlarged as a planned city quarter, a former working harbor that is now a marina. The Scheepvaartkwartier is a protected cityscape and therefore labelled as a national monument. By the end of the 20th century, in a venture to attract wealthy residents and to keep the area rich, luxury apartments, high end restaurants, large law firms and headquarters for the stock-market were built. This was when the neighborhood became so prominent. The average price of a home in the Scheepvaartkwartier is 220% more expensive than the Rotterdam average and prices keep rising, according to Leslie D.T. de Ruiter, managing partner at R365 Christie’s International Real Estate. Since there have been efforts made to keep this area luxurious, prestigious and exclusive, it only further reinforces the reasons why the statue group of the wealthy and famous men were put in this area. Afterall, public art, at its core, corresponds to the symbolic landscape of cities, and this particular landscape exudes the very common way western society often represents urban space: masculine and exclusive.

Since the classical era, art in public space has been used in urbanisation processes throughout the world. Public art really has the power to significantly impact the social and economic fabric of different geopolitical contexts in a positive way. There are cases of public art that raises awareness of historical wrongs and is inclusive towards marginalized people. On the other hand, there are many more cases that are not inclusive, outdated and are compliant to the commercial logic of privatization. The sculpture group at The Scheepvaartkwartier appears to be one of them. Hence, it is crucial to intervene and question how people in power want to narrate the history and remember the past. Malcolm Miles reprimands that monuments create a hegemonic narrative of the past, as though history might be consistent whilst everything else, like our own lives, is mutable and temporary. An example of a very controversial piece of public art is a statue of Piet Heyn at Delfshaven. In 1867, there was a snow statue made of him, and when it melted, it called for a real statue. A monument was made which was unveiled by King Willem III. Last year, a group of activists called Helden van Nooit (Never Heroes) graffitied the statue. They targeted monuments of individuals that they believed should not be given a pedestal. The words killer and dief (theif) were graffitied on the Piet Hein statue. This man was a key figure in paving the way for transatlantic human trafficking of enslaved West Africans. Prime Minister, Mark Rutte responded at a press conference by saying that vandalizing statues and monuments built in honor of Dutch historical figures is not a solution in the debate around racial equality. Instead, he believes that statues offer an opportunity to reflect on both the positive and negative aspects of history. He suggests that people look at the statues, see that the history is there, see the positive and negative aspects of it, and have a talk. He also spoke of the large amounts of wealth generated from the 17th through to the 19th centuries thanks to the VOC and the country’s colonialist history. He stated that we might as well destroy all those buildings that were paid for because of history due to shame. He noted that it is important to be aware that these buildings carry a history in relation to their financing. He then suggested using websites and other means to teach people about history and the context around these statues, monuments or buildings instead.

In colonial Europe, women were regarded as mentally and morally deficient to men. As the weaker gender, women were subordinate and were governed by male authority. Patriarchal norms triumphed. For most colonial women, marriage, motherhood and pregnancies were at the center of their existences. Gender-specific tasks such as making candles and soap, spinning cloth and looking after farm animals were what most women did. Besides this, they were still required to have the bodily strength to engage in other domestic activities. Wives also often helped their husbands with their tasks. A woman’s social position was still subordinate to that of a man, even though their input was essential. In addition to this, a huge education gap favored men since women were destined to have domestic and maternal roles, and therefore education was supposedly pointless. Making busts of five men and framing them with the people who added to the prosperity of Rotterdam in 2011, heavily reinforces patriarchy and excludes women. It represents a time when women were inferior to men and a time when women would not have been able to be labelled as the founding fathers or mothers of Rotterdam. Furthuremore, there is almost no public art commemorating history-making women in Western society, and the existing statues of women rarely get names. They are archetypes, symbols or muses. The latex as the feminine skin formed around the men’s eyes in the form of a blindfold is a symbolic visualization to depict the yearning of blindness of patriarchal society to gender discrimination on top of other factors such as wealth and race.

When an artist becomes involved in an investigation of a site as part of the process, site-responsive art takes place. The investigation usually takes into account the locality, community, history and geography. This process has a correlation to the work in terms of things like the medium that the artist chooses to employ. Site-responsive art is an engaged art form. The artist is attentive to the past and present of the site. It is not possible to evade coming in touch with the cultural, economic and social realities during the progression of the creative process. Usually the site-responsive art lets the audience draw their own conclusion instead of telling them how to perceive the work by depicting the relationship between the work and the site. Besides installation for site-responsive art, often artists integrate a performative element. Since the work is temporal, occurring in its original form only for the time period of exposure in the public space of the site, the nature of live art is really suitable in these conditions.An example of an artist that has created site-responsive work is Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. It was installed on the Fourth Plinth of London’s Trafalgar Square from May 24 2010, to January 30th 2012. It temporarily transformed a space dominated by the 19th century monumental sculpture of Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most famous naval hero. When installed in Trafalgar Square, his model ship in a bottle with its sails made of factory printed textiles associated with West African and African- European identities, contrasted dramatically with the bronze and stone that otherwise distinguish traditional sculpture. His sculpture served to activate public space by it’s references to global identities and African diasporic culture.

By strategically placing these latex pieces on the busts, the work is referring to the bonds between the past and present. It is an invitation to be confronted with The Scheepvaartkwartier’s colonial and maritime commercial history. These men were able to get to make Rotterdam prosperous due to their gender, wealth and race. The aim of these interventions was supposed to make people question who really is in control of communities and open up a dialogue, for people in the space and for myself. The engagement of working at the site of the busts from beginning to end has affected the process and the outcome. Rotterdam has evolved over time and identities and meanings are in a constant continual motion. Stuart Hall noted in his 1996 essay, Cultural Identity and Diaspora. that meanings are never finished or completed and undergo constant transformation. Throughout history they are subject to the continuous ‘play’ of power. The social use of The Scheepvaartkwartier will alter and mutate and the context of the site of the sculptures is a continuing narrative of which the work is now a part of. By incorporating the latex onto the statues, the work becomes a part of the collective memory of the site.

Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World, by Martha Chaiklin et al., Springer International Publishing, 2020, p. 2.

Beeldengroep Scheepvaartkwartier, Stichting Beeldengroep Scheepvaartkwartier, 2011, beeldengroe- protterdam.nl/.

Capps, Kriston. Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 24 Feb. 2016, www.bloomberg.com/news/arti- cles/2016-02-24/the-gender-gap-in-historic-sculptures-and-public-art.

Carponen, Claire. “Rotterdam’s Scheepvaartkwartier Is a Waterside Area With Lots of Green Space.” Mansion Global, Mansion Global, 15 Aug. 2020, www.mansionglobal.com/articles/rotterdams- scheepvaartkwartier-is-a-waterside-area-with-lots-of-green-space-218428?link=TD_fnlondon_ home.27995a643976ebba&utm_source=fnlondon_home.27995a643976ebba&utm_campaign=circu- lar&utm_medium=MANSIONGLOBAL.

Hall, Stuart . “Cultural identity and diaspora.”1996

Heather Shirley. De Gruyter, 2018, Engaging Black European Spaces and Postcolonial Dialogues through Public Art: Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, https:doi.org/10/1515/cul- ture-2019-0031.

History of International Relations: A Non-European Perspective, by Ibn Haldun and Erik Ringmar, Open Book Publishers, 2019, pp. 4–4.

Joost Jonker, Hoboken, Anthony van, in: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland, 14 Aug. 2018, www. resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1780-1830/lemmata/data/hoboken/

Locher-Scholten, Elsbeth. Women and the Colonial State: Essays on Gender and Modernity in the Netherlands Indies 1900-1942. Amsterdam University Press, 2000. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j. ctt46n2p0. Accessed 17 May 2021.

Loftly. “Scheepvaartkwartier.” Loftly, 10 Dec. 2018, www.loftly.nl/en/neighborhoods/scheepvaartk- wartier/.

McIver, Gillian. “Site Specific Art Examples Art and Site. Site Specific Art.” SiteSpecificArt, 19 July 2020, sitespecificart.org.uk/.

NL Times. “Anti-Racism Graffiti on Rotterdam Statues, Art Center.” NL Times, 12 June 2020, nltimes. nl/2020/06/12/anti-racism-graffiti-rotterdam-statues-art-center.

NL Times. “Rutte Response to Defaced Statues: ‘You Cannot Get Rid of History.’” NL Times, 20 Oct. 2020, nltimes.nl/2020/06/13/rutte-response-defaced-statues-get-rid-history.

Peter Singer, animal liberation. A new ethics for our treatment of animals, 204-214
Robert Ross, ‘The Dutch as globalizers in the western basin of the Indian Ocean.’ in Globalisation and the South-West Indian Ocean, eds. Sandra J.T Evers and VInesh Y. Hookoomsing

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Print.

Simon Schama. The Embarrassment of Riches. An interpretation of Dutch culture in the golden age (New York:Vintage Books, 1997), 297.

Tartari, Maria, et al. “Public Art, Cultural Memory and Social Change :” Flash Art, 4 June 2020, flash---art. com/2020/05/public-art-cultural-memory-and-social-change/.

Miles, Malcolm. Art, “Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures”, by, Routledge, 2006, p. 61.