PASSING TIME
Project on Waiting
Part of the Fiep Westendorp Grant 2023–2025
Waiting.
We resist it, yet our lives are threaded together by acts of waiting. It is the hollow interval between two gestures, a stretch of time that slips beyond our control.
Some people wait minutes on the phone. Hours in traffic. Days for an answer. Nights for sleep. Weeks for the tax office. Months for a new lung. Years for a residence permit. A lifetime for Godot.
How do we endure this? How do we carry ourselves in this suspended space? In this work Veerle van Herk explores the way time is experienced. Through carefully composed, wordless scenes, she reveals the human figure in waiting.
Behind the anonymous bodies, stories unfold. At times filled with longing, at times with stillness, at times with unease. Yet they share one thing: each of them waits out time alone, unwillingly.
In a world where waiting is increasingly squeezed out, even as we compulsively fill every empty moment with activity, Veerle van Herk’s images bring time to a standstill, granting meaning to an occupation that is everyday, overlooked, and unseen.
Coulisse, 2024
Gouache on Paper
Passing Time is an ongoing work, made possible with the support of the Fiep Westendorp Grant (2023–2025).