FIEP WESTENDORP STIMULERINGSPRIJS 2023
Thanks to the Fiep Westendorp Stimuleringsprijs, I will be able to work on my own project for the next two years. I want to create a series of illustrations and vignettes around the theme of 'waiting' and hope to get a grasp on an activity that is both invisible and mundane.
Waiting. We don't like to do it. Yet our lives are strung together by moments when we wait. It is the void between two more important actions.
Sometimes the moments are small and we can overlook the time held up. We wait in a traffic jam. We wait for the dentist. We wait in the wings until we are allowed to go on. Sometimes the moments are big and waiting feels like a powerless state.
This great waiting increasingly constitutes a bottleneck in our society and makes inequality visible: The child waits for care, the mother waits for compensation, the patient waits for care, the refugee waits for asylum.
In the series Tussenruimte, Veerle van Herk aims to capture these moments in observational illustrations and film images. By juxtaposing both big and small moments, she hopes to get a grasp on an activity that is both invisible and mundane.