invisible men Work on paper by Patricia Kaersenhout
invisible men Work on paper by Patricia Kaersenhout
This book is dedicated to my uncle Ronald. June 24, 1940 Paramaribo, Suriname - March 14, 1965 Utrecht, The Netherlands
invisible men Work on paper by Patricia Kaersenhout
eindeloos publishers
foreword
You are standing really still behind the curtain. You hear people walking by, calling out, doors being opened and closed again. Being invisible seemed like the most wonderful thing imaginable. Until that one particular day, when you hear nobody walking by and there is no calling out. You must have been standing really still behind the curtain for at least thirty minutes. It slowly dawns on you: there is nobody looking for me. And suddenly it was no longer any fun. Perhaps you can only be invisible if you are being looked for. If you are not being sought then you simply don’t exist. And what if you are searching for an invisible someone but nobody is searching for you? Who is actually invisible then? Inspired by Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, Patricia Kaersenhout sets out in search of the invisible men in her life. She opens doors and bangs them shut again. And sometimes, when for a brief moment she seems to be standing face to face with her invisible man, he looks straight through her. On the pages of an old biology book, with its illustrations of intestines, skin structure, hair, the digestive system, and so on, she tries to visualize the invisible; from spirit to flesh. This book presents the front as well as the reverse sides of the work, the invisible visible and the visible… really still behind the curtain.
prologue
Patricia Kaersenhout was born in Den Helder, the Netherlands, in 1966. Both her parents originated from the former Dutch colony Suriname. She studied drawing, painting, and graphic art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her work is remarkable for its surprising use of materials, which are not merely employed as a stylistic device but also provide a commentary on the subject matter she has chosen. She paints with black pitch, uses molten wax, embroiders, and makes scorch marks on her paper. Being black has always been an important theme in her work. ‘In my earlier paintings I was busy making black people visible by painting them very emphatically, without a backdrop, emotion, a painterly touch or signature,’ she stated in an earlier interview published in Europa, een web van verhalen (Europe, a web of stories). ‘I specifically want to be as minimal a presence as possible in my work.’ With this paradoxical statement at the back of one’s mind it is hardly surprising that Ralph Ellison’s novel, Invisible Man, was especially appealing to her. For here, too, we do not discover the name of the protagonist who renders himself invisible, but does this by enveloping himself in light. He withdraws into a cellar illuminated by 1,369 light bulbs and therefore makes himself invisible to the world but emphatically present within his own hide-out. It is intriguing that for Patricia Kaersenhout this book prompted an internalization of sorts. She turned being black into something personal: the black men in her drawings are no longer anonymous but have become fathers, brothers and uncles. This internalization is what makes this series of drawings so intense, generating a certain stratification. Invisibility is revealed in all its guises: the social and public invisibility but most especially the invisibility of the solitary individual.
like a denial of my existence an interview
Backdrop: in Patricia’s studio, works on paper on the walls, the initial design for the book close at hand. Time of interview: late March 2009, the weather refusing to turn into spring and the heating doing its roaring best to compensate. What inspired this project? My father. Or, more precisely, reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was what motivated me to tackle the issue of my father. He left home after my first birthday, and from that point he was absent. The first time I saw him again was a few years ago, in a home video. He was wearing sunglasses with mirrored lenses and a baseball cap. It was a weird sensation. I couldn’t see his eyes. He was looking straight into the camera, but he couldn’t see me either, of course: it was a strange inversion of being invisible. That preoccupied me for a very long time. Eyes that disappear under the shadow of a cap and behind reflective glasses. It felt like a denial of my existence. My father fled when my mother was pregnant with my brother, and he adopted a new identity and a new nationality. He lives in Canada now. So it’s motivated by anger? Yes, for sure, but not by frustration. I’m more angry with him for what he has done to my brother. He has difficulty communicating with his surroundings. It’s like he’s gradually eradicating himself, building a wall to hide behind. It feels like I can’t get through to him. I don’t have much contact with him. He lives in his apartment like the main character from Invisible Man in his cellar. The project also has something to do with my uncle, my mother’s brother. He came to the Netherlands in the 1960 s to study. One day he fell asleep with the coal-fired heater left on and died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He died anonymously after barely a month in the Netherlands; I didn’t know him whatsoever. And it also has something to do with me personally, of course. I was born in the Netherlands and I speak plain Dutch. When people I’d spoken with on the phone saw that I was black they were shocked: my mere presence was cause for confusion. My brother and I were brought up to think that we weren’t supposed to attract too much attention, that we had to more or less make ourselves invisible. I used to be a really timid girl, though perhaps you wouldn’t say that any more. When I read Invisible Man a great many pieces of the puzzle fell into place. I recognized a lot of my father in it, but also a lot of myself.
You’ve called the project ‘Invisible Men’ and not ‘Invisible Man’. The book by Ellison is about one man, you’re right, but I chose the plural, because during the work process I discovered that what I was dealing with, enclosed all kinds of different black men. I’ve tried to make it more universal, about invisibility in general, about people in general. Another possibility is that the plural isn’t meant literally, that it represents the different identities my brother wrestles with, perhaps my father, and of course me personally. This struggle means I have complicated relationships with black men. The main character in Ellison’s book isn’t actually seen by other people. I can relate to that. Throughout my life I’ve been intensely aware of the idea that you don’t exist. You degenerate into a fluid substance, effortlessly assuming any form someone else expects of you, or as required by the situation. At least you think this is what’s expected of you. That started with my father, but it also raised its head later on because of my immediate surroundings. However, I don’t know whether it was my idea that my surroundings didn’t see me or that the surroundings truly didn’t see me. I don’t have an answer to that. You develop some kind of borderline syndrome because of it. Could you have called the project ‘Invisible Women’ instead? Maybe. Perhaps that’s my next project. The black woman finds herself in an awkward position as a matter, of course. She’s not really seen by white men, or by black men. I know what it’s like and I see it in my mother as well. You shouldn’t see all of this as pure anger, by the way, because I’m trying to find a balance, by resolving it with humor, for example. Perhaps emotional is a better word than angry. That covers all the feelings, including humor. You’re making your father visible through this project. I’m reconstructing him. At that point I’m a dictator, a director. I can direct it as I want, which gives me satisfaction; I’m not a plaything of adults anymore. Do you construct an ideal father? That’s what I wanted to do when I was fourteen and still an adolescent, but I’m no longer concerned with things in that way; I’m not bothered about searching for an answer. So what was the purpose of this project? To free myself. Curiosity. I’ve always put it off because it was too painful. Reading such a book meant I could establish a distance from it. Then you work on the basis of a different emotion. If you don’t establish any distance the art you produce will be muddy. I’m not busy with some kind of therapy. When I’m working I don’t think about my father whatsoever; I’m thinking about whether it should be blue, if the composition is fine, if the form is right – those kinds of things.
You’ve taken literature as a reference for this project. Do you do that often? No, I don’t think so. I often use texts in my work, but that’s like sampling. I certainly like telling stories and my work is often narrative. You’ve chosen a specific form for this project. I came across some old biology textbooks with the title Human Biology. At that point I had already read Ellison; he was already lodged somewhere in my mind. I wondered what would happen if I worked on the pages of such a biology book. It already had attractive illustrations in it. I took the book apart completely and I also changed the sequence. While working away I discovered that it was somehow related to Ellison. He writes about an invisible man, but at the same time he provides a summary of his physical features. By working on a biology page you were also turning an invisible man into flesh and blood. That’s right, but it wasn’t premeditated. I’m not an intellectual conceptual artist, more of an emotional conceptual artist. While I was working I noticed that the background was starting to interact, was being sucked into the drawing, as it were. I didn’t consciously pay attention to it or deliberately work towards that, in the same way I didn’t take any notice of the texts, because I didn’t want to. You can see that I occasionally used a page upside down. You often work in series. I work fairly quickly and I want to let the works interact with each other. If I get stuck with one particular drawing then I go back to drawing fifteen, for example. Is that why you work with collage? Yes, because I have less difficulty with the form if I work with existing material. Form is really important to me. And I’ve always been fascinated by photos. In a photo a photographer provides a cut-out of reality. By using that photo I establish an even greater distance from reality. Because what is reality? Who decides what reality is? That preoccupies me. What happens if you step outside reality? Then you end up in chaos, and I find that far more interesting. There are plenty of eyes in your drawings, that’s obvious, but there are also many mouths. I’m a fan of Ellen Gallagher’s work. She’s concerned with the external features of black people in her paintings as well. She takes the mouths and makes them part of a greater whole, so that they become almost abstract. She plays with prejudices about black people. There’s a great deal of humor in that work and I’ve drawn inspiration from it. But aren’t your mouths screaming out loud? I might have done it like that subconsciously …… I’ve often had dreams in which I scream really loud from terror, but no sound comes out. Perhaps it has something to do with that. Being unseen,
unheard and therefore not understood. I don’t really know, but I think it’s fine if people ask questions like that. Then they remember the work, at least. However, I don’t want to provide any answers in my work. Your palette is fairly restrained, so if you do use color then as a viewer I tend to attribute a symbolic significance to it. That’s the case with all my work. From a teacher at the art academy I learned that you should only use color if it adds something to the image. That was an eye-opener for me, because I often didn’t know what to do with color. It didn’t cross my mind that in this case the colors might be read symbolically. Most of the colors actually come from the biology book itself; they’re not my colors. Why did this project have to be in book form? I thought that the form was a fine reaction to Ellison’s book. I wanted to respond with a book. It also has something to do with that biology book. First I took it apart completely, and now I’m piecing it back together in my own way. I also discovered that the pages in a book have reverse sides. That presented me with the possibility of printing off several reverse sides, without the viewer knowing what the front sides are. It meant I could add an extra dimension to the theme of invisibility. So it has ended up becoming an artist’s book? Yes. It stands on its own, and I’ve no desire to present it together with the work on paper: it’s not a catalogue and it’s not an interpretation of the images. It has a totally different focus, because I use quotes from Ellison’s book and cut-outs; the materiality plays a much smaller part in it. A book has a demythologizing effect: it has become an object. That’s why I love the story an artist from Suriname told me: he left behind several artworks at his Dad’s place, and his Dad simply used them to build a chicken-coop. Brilliant! I like to create. As soon as a work is finished it’s out of my system. It has to be set free, it has to go and fly, go its own way. After that it doesn’t matter to me what the viewer does with it. He’s allowed to interpret it however he wants. At least it shows that someone is looking with his own eyes. Hopefully you’re compelled to look at my work properly, then things emerge from it. To what extent does this project fit in with the rest of your oeuvre? I don’t actually have an answer to that, because it’s not something I think about. People often tell me that my works can be very diverse in character, and to me that’s a huge compliment. I’m not obsessed with a personal style or with being recognizable – that makes your eyes lazy. Each work I create feels like being born anew, like a child taking its first little steps. I need that uncertainty, the doubt that precedes the dawning of a suspicion. It’s the search for a precarious balance, and in the process I sometimes fall into that seemingly immeasurable void. I embrace that free fall, not knowing where the ship will run ashore. The most exciting part of the fall is when
I’m balancing between being and not being. I love the twilight zone during the creation process: it holds something mysterious, something inexplicable. How do you respond if people say that you don’t seem to break free of being black in your work? No problem. I can’t view the world in any other way. I’m black and I look from the perspective of being black. This doesn’t mean I make so-called ghetto art, by the way; I don’t play the suffering object, the victim – I don’t like that. Perhaps I used to do that before, but I don’t any more. Being a victim is unrelated to skin color. We’re all victims and culprits. At the end of Ellison’s Invisible Man the main character shoulders his responsibility. He recognizes that he also has brought it on himself, which appeals to me. I do feel a bond with the underdogs in society. You could certainly call my work engaged, but I don’t want to be a moral crusader. I’ve a dislike for pamphletism, which dates so quickly. I don’t know whether my work has any impact and I’m not bothered by that. I do want my work to be timeless, for it to be possible to see something new in it time and again. I like the idea of it being interpreted in a different way at a different time. That I find exciting.
Rob Perrée Amsterdam, March 2009
Studio Patricia Kaersenhout
invisible men 01 - 08 front - back back - front front - back back - front front - back back - front front - back back - front*
* Both the front and reverse sides of the work are presented in this book. In the foreword you can read more about the structure of this book.
The end was in
the beginning. Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
invisible men Work on paper by Patricia Kaersenhout So who is actually invisible? Someone who remains unnoticed or someone who has no desire to be seen? What does ‘being invisible’ actually mean? inspired by Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s only novel, artist Patricia Kaersenhout set out in search of the invisible men in her life. On the pages of an old biology textbook with its illustrations of innards, skin structure, hair, the digestive system, and so on, she tried to visualize the invisible: from spirit to flesh.
eindeloos publishers