Our artist residency in BijlmAIR has finished. Rinaldo Klas (from Suriname), Moritz Ebinger (from Switzerland) and I thought it would be nice to capture this moment by taking a picture of our hands, signing the very last drawing we made:

Rinaldo Klas was here, during the month of September, at the invitation of CBK Zuidoost, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Bradwolff Projects. Rinaldo invited Moritz and me to join him and collaborate. We worked on the theme ‘birds’, chosen by the three of us because we love birds, they are part of each of our art practices. In a previous post I wrote: “Tropical birds and birds of the Bijlmer, street birds. Birds bridge distances and birds live in the AIR of the BijlmAIR. BThe theme also relates to the many nationalities of people, thus the working title will be ‘ala kondre fowru’, Sranan Tongo (Surinamese) for ‘birds of all nations’. Birds, people, they, we have to, everybody has to live together, get along, adapt, accept each other. It will be a colorful project for sure!” And colorful it was! Photos of what we made during this period can be seen in a bigger size in this online folder:

All in all it was an amazing, productive, inspiring, challenging, special, beautiful, intensive, unforgettable period and I think I speak for the three of us when I say that I am extremely grateful that I was able to experience this. We artists, free as birds but with different personalities and styles, worked together, in the same space, on the same canvases and pieces of paper, often simultaneously, had to give each other space, tolerate each others work on top of and inside each collaborative art work. Come to think of it: both our theme (different birds living together) and our way of working (different artists working together) are closely connected. Looking back at this period, we also came to realize that we created art works each of us would never have made by our selves. Who knows how this will influence our personal work in the future, and … it is very well possible that we will be collaborating again, some way or another, maybe in our beloved Suriname!

On December 8th BijlmAIR 2022, a group exhibition of all artists who have recently resided and worked in BijlmAIR Heesterveld, will open in CBK Zuidoost, Anton de Komplein, Amsterdam. Rinaldo Klas will be back in The Netherlands again, to be able to attend the opening.