are you at home?
Exhibition
2020, La Pléiade, Espace Culturel, Commentry, France
“Are you at home?” is the title of a series of drawings on trees, rocks and its inhabitants. Apparently these inhabitants have no desire to return to the world.
To deliberately elect to sleep in something that looks like a bearhole, instead of a comfortable bed, is clearly not the action of 21st century men or women.
But then, they are not everyday 21st century men and women. They abominate nothing more than what is termed ‘civilized life”.
-homage to Count Henry Russell, hermit of the Pyrenees.
are you at home?
drawings
The series of drawings are inspired by a fascination for 15th-16th century engravings of woods, the oak trees in the Allier, hermits, rocks and trees, butoh dansers, a priest in Indonesia, my brother and the drawings of treehuts by my art school kids.
Lo soffia il cielo, cosí
The performance, Lo soffia il cielo, cosí, for 6 girls, 6 poets and 20 balloons was performed for the first time in 2003 at the Rocca of Carmignano.
Each girl held 3 balloons. Each balloon held written words, and each series of balloons formed a phrase. Connie requested Dutch poets to write variations on the theme of waiting and absence on an example of Baudelaire.
The Dutch poets F. van Dixhhoorn, Melle Hammer, Hans Kloos, K. Michel, F. Starik were so kind to write a contribution.
video
The documentation of Connie’s extended collections of French mid-century vases, Arcopal dinnerware, ribbons of the first half of the 20th century and the movement of everyday objects as curtains were the start of a series of retrograde video slideshows.
the garden of speech
In memoriam of my father
Leendert Jan Dekker +1992
When someone dies, all small things disappear and so do all small memories connected to them. Two years after the death of my father, in 1994, I started to embroider his drawings in stem stem stitches on sheets and pillows. The work is still in progress.