Artists: Andrea Freckmann, Berndnaut Smilde, Lola Göller, Levi van Veluw, Nan Wang, Funda Baysal, Michaela Lakova, Lily Huston-Herterich, Eden Mitsenmacher, Rene Beekman, Larisa David, Marie Civikov, Merve Kılıçer, Angelika Falkeling
Project manager: Karina Simova
Director of the H Talks series: Milena Kaneva
Curated by Irina Batkova
The Herbarium project examines the essence of the creative process through work strategies and contacts between visual artists in contemporary culture. The Herbarium collection seals the energy of the creative act of different generations of artists around the world into boxes, similar to those that store plant specimens. The boxes are accompanied by original text and audio files, as well as additional materials, related to the artistic biographies of the participants. The collected materials are published at www.herbariumcollection.com.
The H Talks video portraits which are part of the Herbarium project are filmed in the artists’ working environment. All elements of the project create a unique archive for researchers, curators, gallerists, students and art appreciators, who are interested in the not so visible mechanisms of work in contemporary culture. The first exposition of the Herbarium collection in 2021 took place in Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art. It gathered 55 authors from Bulgaria, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Japan, Finland, USA and Turkey.
The new edition of Herbarium is realized in partnership with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and is focused on artists based in the country. The project includes eight new artists, besides the participants in the last exhibition. The Dutch selection of Herbarium includes Andrea Freckmann, Berndnaut Smilde, Lola Göller, Levi van Veluw, Nan Wang, Funda Baisal, Michaela Lakova, Lily Huston-Herterich, Eden Mitsenmacher, Rene Beekman, Larisa David, Marie Civikov, Merve Kılıçer and Angelika Falkeling.
The curator Irina Batkova and H Talks director Milena Kaneva has documented the encounters with eight artists in their work studios in Rotterdam, the Hague, Amsterdam and Middelburg. In short videos the visual artists reflect on various aspects of their realization on the artistic stage and approach very important topics, related to the possibility to preserve your artistic independence in a world where daily survival requires more and more strength and energy. The exhibition includes the video portraits of Eden Mitsenmacher, Andrea Frekmann, and Marie Civikov.
