Make something. Find a use for it. AND / OR Invent a function. Find an object.
One thing working one way Another thing working another way. One thing working different ways at different times. Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. " " " " " "
Jasper Johns | 1965 in Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing
Marie Verboven, curator - exhibitions & collection of the Verbeke Foundation in Kemzeke in Belgium presented an oeuvre exhibition of my work during the winter exhibition 2024 – 2025.
Click here for a Dutch spoken tv-item by Ilja Tuning;
Click here for a Dutch article on the expo, also by Ilja Tuning.
To be presented in the Chrysoula Zogia Museum and Art Gallery
Volos - Greece
DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXIX
| i.d. of a body map for snipers
print 12 x 21 cm on 350 grs Plano
Grote Kerk | Driebergen
For Friends of the Tent Of Bethlehem
February 8 – March 8
Three kites made out of newspapers with articles on the genocide in Gaza and war crimes in the West Bank.
Tail made of 106 names of murdered journalists in Gaza, the Westbank, Israel and Lebanon
Size | 270 x 170 cm.
Poem from loudspeaker:
English / Arabic / Dutch / German
If I must die | Refaat Al-Areer (1979 – 2023)
Voices | Rezan Habash, Dani Ploeger and Hans Overvliet
Recording | Sjef Hermans
Edit | Jochem Weststrate
Thanks to / photo
Chris Kors (also production for ‘Driebergen’)
Kunstverein Ebersberg
02 - 31 May 2025
Final format poster: 3560 x 2520 mm
Migrations Mail Art Exhibition
Lancaster University / Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts
Great Britain
Sait Toprac&Gerry Davies, curators
May 15 – March 27, 2025
DISTANT SUFFERING XXII
i.d. of inequality
contribution Sait Toprac to DISTANT SUFFERING XXII
LancasterGBR | Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts / Lancaster University | 20/06/’25
Movies That Matter
Foyer of The National Theater (Theater aan het Spui) | The Hague
March 21 – March 29
DISTANT SUFFERING
III | i.d. of a recovery
Stone and Glass / IT'S IN IT
July 8 - August 21, 2025
Maria Magdalenachurch | Goes
The New Museum of Networked Art July – December 2025 | world wide through w.’s eye
film cooperation with Jochem Verstrate
The New Museum of Networked Art
July - December 2025 | world wide
DISTANT SUFFERING XXXX | i.d. of an artist's video portrait utterly endlessly repurposed naive incantation gesture film in cooperation with Jochem Verstrate
A project by Bo de Jong & Bert Dorrestijn
May 3, 2025 | KipVis / Sloeweg – Flushing
nine yellow cleaning wipes | nine languages | one question
DISTANT SUFFERING
XXXXVI | i.d. of the shared tale of a bullet ( difference and repetition )
special cut of the video selected in the competition ‘Zeeuws Licht‘ in the the category ‘experimental’ Film by the Sea, Vlissingen September 12 through September 21
Between Saturday 13 and Friday 19 September, two to three Zeeuws Licht films will premiere every day.
As is tradition, all thirty selected films will also be screened during Zeeland Film Day on 20 September, the last Saturday of the festival.
DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a
OPEN NIGHTS festival | Larissa | Greece
October 9 – October 19, 2025
Larissa | Greece
2 0 2 4 – 2 0 2 5
DISTANT SUFFERING
| the tale of the bullet (i.d. of an artist’s portrait) stills from the video
DISTANT SUFFERING XXXXV | i.d. of a shared gold-plated bullet
print of a sugar beet for a project in Argentina
MINIPRINT INTERNACIONAL PLANTAS NATIVAS
about industrial destruction of agricultural land 20 x 20 cm, 350 grs plano
DISTANT SUFFERING LI
i.d. of the persistence of the clinique
Colmar | Deir al-Balah
the catalogue
DISTANT SUFFERING LIV
i.d. of a vanishing object
Leiden 1959 | West Bank 2025
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit: The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained. It is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
Since 2013, by means of the ongoing art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet (Leiden, 1952) investigates the role of the media in their representation of (military) violence. This, in the context of themes as perception, memory and identity formation.
Overvliet uses a various range of media, symbols and codes, bringing together dichotomies like beauty and violence, refinement and brutality, the sublime and the vulgar.
Aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer infiltrate his multifaceted conceptual oeuvre. As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to the events in the Middle East during the 1980s. Of course these experiences resonate in distant suffering.
Elements of distant suffering were exhibited in the Netherlands, Belgium, Pakistan, England, France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Albania, Germany, Lebanon, the U.S.A., Brasil, Argentina and Sweden.
In 2023, his whole body of paper collages ( 1999 – 2012 ) joined Geert Verbeke’s renowned collection of collages and assemblages.
In 2024 - 2025 the whole oeuvre of distant suffering was exhibited in the museum part of the Verbeke Foundation. All works will then be included in the permanent collection.
Next to his art-work Hans is, together with his wife Willy van Houtum, the founder and every day guardian of ruimteCAESUUR, the 30-year old space for contemporary art in Middelburg in the province of Zeeland.
Verbeke FoundationBelgium , ruimteCAESUUr, uitgeverij De Bovenkamer, no-intituteGermany , Omroep Zeeland, Wij Zijn De Stad, Lacuna StudiosSpain , Roofprintpers, Kunsthaus HamburgGermany , Movies That Matter, Matera International PhotographyItaly , Volos Art AssociationGreece , Mohamed Hart-ArtGaza , Sisyphos-Gesellschaft Germany , Toonbeeld, Open Nights FestivalGreece , Friends Tent of Nations Nederland, Stichting Het Rode Ei Goes, Lancaster UniversityGreat Britain, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary ArtsGreat Britain , Film by the Sea Flushing, The New Museum of Networked ArtGermany ,
hans overvliet
studio-address | Dreesstraat 2 Vlissingen
home-address | Lange Noordstraat 67, NL-4331 CC Middelburg www.hansovervliet.com | curiositas@zeelandnet.nl team member of www.caesuur.nu www.ikbeneengod.one click here for my condensed portfolio click here for my extended portfolio click here for my C.V.
An object that tells of loss, destruction, disappearance of objects. Does not speak of itself. Tells of others. Will it include them?