Photo cover: Westkappelse Sea dike on a Dutch day
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
Samuel
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Beckett | 1983 | Worstward Ho
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
| i.d. of a body map for snipers
print 12 x 21 cm on 350 grs Plano
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’)
02 - 31 May 2025
Final format poster: 3560 x 2520 mm
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
Foyer of The National Theater (Theater aan het Spui) | The Hague
March 21 – March 29
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
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 )
Toonbeeld | Verbeeldingsroute / Imagination Pathway 2025
July 5 – September 14, 2025
Museum ‘ING-gang’ | Stadhuisplein / Terneuzen
1,200 plaster porcelain bullets in a 160 x 120 cm frame, accompanied by the video
DISTANT SUFFERING | the tale of the bullet (i.d. of an artist’s portrait)
i.d. of an artist’s portrait
special cut of the video selected in ‘Zeeuws Licht‘ in the the category ‘experimental’ Film by the Sea, Vlissingen September 12 through September 21
As is tradition, all selected films were also screened during Zeeland Film Day on 20 September, the last Saturday of the festival. 2025.
Photo’s next pages: Sylvia Hubrouck and Bo de Jong
Link to the (Dutch) festival version.
DISTANT SUFFERING XXI | i.d. of a shared ice bullet opening performance
OPEN NIGHTS festival | Larissa | Greece
October 9 – October 19, 2025
2 0 2 4 – 2 0 2 5
| the tale of the bullet (i.d. of an artist’s portrait) stills from the video
print of a sugar beet for a project in Argentina
about industrial destruction of agricultural land 20 x 20 cm, 350 grs plano
Colmar | Deir al-Balah
i.d. of a vanishing object
Leiden 1959 | West Bank 2025
DISTANT SUFFERING LVI | i.d. of shared betrayal
Work DISTANT SUFFERING LVI |
cotton pouches with bullet holes caused by air pistol Webly Tempest 4,5 mm, nr. 221796, Webly&Scott LTD, Shagai Parboil rice, mixed with Riz noir interdit, Maison Sabarot, video, courtesy by ©Myuz Ahmed, July 27, 2025, Gaza Strip, edited to black and white with scratch filter, 24” TV- Samsung LF22T450FQUX | Speedlink BRIO - Stereo Soundbar, brown paper bag from bakehouse ’t Zand, Middelburg, Monzana Storage Rack Bookcase, 5 Shelves, 135,5 x 58 x 27 cm, July 27 – August 29, 2025.
Support Myoz
You can support Myuz Ahmed in his work to heal traumatised children in his Children's Psychological Support Center: http://paypal.me/myuzgaza123 | https://gofund.me/6c7692e9
Next pages
work in the studio / stills from the video
Click here for the catalogue
For over a year now, I receive videos from my Gazan friend and colleague Myuz Ahmed. Myuz is helping traumatised children in the Gaza Strip. In his daily videos he, without further ado, shows what remains of his world by simply walking in his utterly destroyed habitat. One on one. Myuz’ images pile up in my head with all the other horrors of that day. Of course it does not leave me unmoved, but it does not overwhelm me either.
Until 26 July. A reel of just under seven seconds. I see a bearded man crouching down, scraping something out of the sand and putting that something in a brown paper bag.
For a moment, I manage to convince myself that I am not seeing what I’m seeing. That this is not a man trying to extract the last remnants of some spilled rice from the sand for his starving family somewhere in a tent. After a few seconds, my defences collapse and I realise what I am seeing.
Suddenly, my grandfather's history becomes a full-colour reality. I see him returning tired and emaciated from a trip in winter 1944 from Leiden beyond Haarlem. To the polders where his family originated from. He has hung two panniers on his bicycle – indeed with wooden tyres – containing some potatoes and vegetables to feed his family.
As he returns at the Morspoort, he is stopped by four German soldiers and forced to throw his hard-earned belongings into the canal - the Morssingel. I would like to point out that my grandfather did not tell this story to vent his hatred for the Nazis: he always added that “we” would never resort to such practices. As a child, he made me promise that solemnly; I will never forget the look in his eyes when he said that.
Watching the man in the video endlessly, I hear Grandfathers Vissers’ voice, I feel his anger, his powerlessness, the sadness, the humiliation, the defeat. The sadness about the man in the video is now hitting me hard and will completely paralyse me for a few days.
completely paralyse me for a few days. Because I had solemnly promised my Grandpa that we would never let it come to this again. That we had drawn up international laws. Indeed in accordance with the Magna Carta Libertatum from 1215 we established the U.N., installed the I.C.C. (in The Hague of all places!) as the successor to the Nuremberg Trials, we set up the Geneva Conventions (Article 47!), etc., etc. Never again exclamation mark.
And yet: the man in the video was forced to perform the same humiliating and life-threatening act my grandfather Visser was forced to do in the extreme cold winter of 1944.
We have betrayed ourselves greatly . . .
identification of a deadly pattern German version | revisited (2025)
The beauty of the other's uniqueness must be accompanied by the realization that the other is completely and even frighteningly different from me.
Emmanuel Lévinas (1906 – 1995)
The work
Videos with photos of 186 media representatives who were assasinated by the Israeli army between October 7, 2023, and September 14, 2025; Video with 186 postcards of places I visited in Europe while commemorating these colleagues;
186 Postcards on 300 gm; Prints by de Witte Print&Design, ’s Gravenpolder;
Handi Stitch Classic pinking shears | 4 teeth - 2 mm high / 18 mm wide;
Glass plate 65 x 35 cm x 8 mm;
Glass plate support 8 mm | glastotaal.nl | PT027537001;
Photobook, 32 x 15 cm, made by bookbinding workshop De Boeckenherrebergh | Ruth Bonnewel;
Monitors | each controlled by a Mini HD Media Player - afinjo.nl;
Paper bin | rectangular | black metal | 17 l | Able & Borret.
The German version was conceived for an exhibition at plan-d in Düsseldorf, April-May 2025.
Click here for the catalogue in the process of becoming. Click here for the catalogue of an earlier version, included in the collection of the Verbeke Foundation.
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.
Thanks - people
Willy, Giel, GeertBelgium, MarieBelgium, Jorieke, Jochem,
Ko, Johan, TinekeBelgium, JürgenGermany, Dani, Bo, Sylvia, Erjee, Ilja, leon, Hans, Chris, Onno, Jan, Sarah-Jane, RitaGaza , Simon, SilvioItalia, Sonja, Tonnie, Adriaan,
Daniël, Edwin, WilfriedGermany , Sam, Ben, Neeltje, Sam,
Guus, RezanSyria, Sjef, MarwanGaza , MohamedGaza , RaedGaza, YasserGaza, MaisaraGaza , SohailGaza , Godelieve,
Leni, WissemSyria, Marianne, Erica, Ruud, Marten,
Loek, EbeedGaza, Dirk&UliGermany , Lucia, AdolfinaIItalia , Chris, Gerrit, Fé, RitaGaza , MohamedGaza, Roos,
Anne-Lyke, Floor, Pier, Anke, Thomas, OlegUkraine , OlenaUkraine , Willy, Marlize, Arjelien, Kisito, RoulaGreece , GerryGreat Britain, TopracGreat Britain , Jan, Bo, IssamYemen , Ruth,
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?
Deluge.
Jasper Johns
Sketchbook | 1964
