love me

Art Manifestation Heemskerk.‘LOVE ME’. Joanneke Meester has a special relationship with the human body. Her project ‘Pistol’, made from her own skin, earned both admiration and abhorrence. Still, it was an important work, because it was a combination “of the most vulnerable and the most violent that I could think of. I wasn’t just a perpetrator and an artist, I was also a victim”. (NRC Handelsblad, 2 June 2007) . In Joanneke’s works, beauty is contrasted with decay and love is coupled with cruelty. They deal with vulnerability, life and death, power and powerlessness. The titles of her works sometimes reflect this: Crime, Safe/Not Safe.

Her work on the beach is titled ‘Love Me’. We see parts of a woman’s body – pathetic, repulsive, grotesque, laughable – in a kind of gauze display case. Or is it a cradle, or a deathbed? Pieces of lace hang against the gauze with texts written in a cheerfully childlike hand. They seem to be diary fragments, or scribbles from a notebook. They sound almost as imploring or begging as the title. “Look at my hands so beautiful”; “My breasts are marvellous”. But everyone can see what the hands and breasts actually look like by climbing the inviting steps. Compared with this person, everyone is beautiful.

Participating artists: Alphons ter Avest, Nathalie Bruys, Wapke Feenstra, Florian Göttke, Robbert van der Horst, Fransje Killaars, Wouter Klein Velderman, Diederik Klomberg, Birthe Leemeijer, Joanneke Meester