Hanneke Klinkum

In a time of distance and isolation, Hanneke Klinkum and Marjolein Landman decided to enter into a confrontation, both conceptually and materially. After an intensive working period, this resulted in the sculpture Exiguo STS-126.
The work evolved from their reflections on and engagement with nature and its condition: the environment, decay, filth, and waste, but also its beauty, resilience, and self-regulating capacity. In an open and playful process, they searched for a form of organic, polymorphous symbiosis, taking as their model everything that occurs in nature: corrosion, traces of human intervention, debris, fungi, growth, and beauty, as well as that which fills them with wonder and/or indignation.
This translated into bundles of long, wildly glazed ceramic, seaweed-like strands, intertwined with iron wire; shiny clusters of roe-like eggs; and in between, clumped, manipulated forms of polyurethane foam, plaster, iridescent plastics, and LED light. A kind of rack made of welded pipes and reinforcing bars holds the tangle together.
The title Exiguo STS-126 combines the Latin word for scrap/waste with the name of a space mission that left a great deal of debris in outer space, and sounds as strange and exotic as a residue discharged into rivers by the pharmaceutical industry.

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Installation | ceramics, polyurethane foam, plaster, LED light, iron wire | various locations | Text: Ingrid Luycks MA, art historian | 2021

Fort Vaux in northern France was built between 1881 and 1884 and modernized and reinforced between 1904 and 1906, including a concrete roof with a stronger concrete composition of pebble: sand: cement in the ratio 3 : 1 : 2.4.

This specific concrete ratio arose from developments in warfare (from artillery fire to explosive shells), in order to provide forts with more effective protection through a stronger concrete mixture and, later, reinforced concrete. Fort Vaux was used during the First World War to house garrisons, weapons, ammunition, and food supplies.

The Battle of Verdun, of which the fighting around Fort Vaux formed a part, began on 21 February 1916 and ended with the surrender of Fort Vaux by Major Raynal to the Germans on 7 June 1916. Many were killed and wounded during the horrific fighting, compounded by exhaustion due to water shortages and flamethrower attacks in the fort’s corridors.

In the spring of 2015, passionate art and book collector Piet van de Ven visited Fort Vaux. As part of the defensive line around Verdun in northern France, the fort had been the scene in June 1916 of a dramatic and devastating attack by German troops, who captured and smoked out the bastion. Van de Ven was deeply impressed by this charged site.

The postcard he purchased there was, upon returning to the Netherlands, given to visual artists, choreographers, playwrights, and poets with the request that they allow themselves to be inspired by it. The visual results were exhibited in June 2016 at Luycks Gallery, supplemented by other works by the participating artists: Henk Duijn, Hanneke Klinkum, René Korten, Marjolein Landman, Ernest Potters, Ellen Rijk, and Reinoud van Vught, as well as an interpretation by choreographer/dancer Ulrike Doszmann.

As a “memorial marker”, I cast a reinforced concrete block using the same concrete composition as that used for Fort Vaux: 3 : 1 : 2.4, with several bones embedded in the concrete.

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Concrete, bones, iron | 40 × 40 × 16 cm | May 2016

From 22 May to 3 July 2016, the exhibition Atelierportretten NL took place at the Cacaofabriek. The exhibition was organized by artist Willem Muijs, who himself participated with large charcoal drawings. The drawings depict “the studio” as their subject.
Willem Muijs visited around twenty artists in their studios and created drawings in response to these visits. Each artist creates a unique atmosphere and workspace in their studio, suited to the work produced there. Muijs captures this individuality in his drawings, attempting to convey the distinct character of each studio.
For the exhibition Atelierportretten NL, he asked the artists to contribute to an exhibition alongside the studio drawings. The nineteen artists who agreed responded with a work, a text or a photograph. These contributions were exhibited in conjunction with the studio drawings.
Atelierportretten NL offers insight into this mental landscape through the series of “studio drawings” and the artists’ responses to them.

My reaction on the drawing Willem Muijs made from my studio was to attach real and ceramic sculls aswell as prepared minks directly ON his drawing.

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Concept and organization: Willem Muijs | Photography: Benno Neeleman | 2016

The installation Bellas Bellotas by Hanneke Klinkum consists of a variable number of pig legs from which the meat has been scraped down to the bone. The removed meat is the so-called pata negra ham, also known as jamón bellota.
This jamón bellota comes from pigs bred in southwestern Spain that have lived a “beautiful” life in the open countryside. During their lives, they are fed bellotas, acorns, from which the meat derives its specific aroma and flavor. This makes the ham an exclusive and costly delicacy.
Klinkum suspended the legs from coarse meat hooks and ropes, as in a butcher’s shop. The elegant black hooves point proudly upward, contrasting with the hooks and the bones, to which shreds of fat and skin still cling and from which the characteristic aroma can still be detected.
The contrast between the delicate beauty of the hooves and the raw legs, between graceful lightness and the banal reality of bare bones and the fate awaiting the pigs after their beautiful lives prompted Klinkum to “dress” the legs. She adorned them with long, flowing, transparent skirts made of fine fabrics embroidered with gold thread. Through the transparency, the shape of the bones remains visible, as do traces of leaking fat that have here and there remained in the fabric.
The effect of the graceful black hooves combined with fragile lace, voile, satin, and hairy legs is alienating and invites reflection. Or, as the artist herself asks: “A danse macabre? A sweet justification of our gastronomic desire? Or muted shame at our use of the animal for our pleasure?”

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Installation | variable number of pig legs, rope, hooks, various fabrics, gold thread | various locations | Text: Ingrid Luycks MA, art historian | 2011 - 2015

Workingperiod with Casper in ‘Kunstkameraden’. Art project of the Cultuurkantine-foundation: Dossier 3.0 - 50 artists worked with 50 kids from Jeugdzorg (social youth care): ‘Kunstkameraden’, exhibition of this project in the Noordbrabants Museum, ’s-Hertogenbosch and Breda's museum.

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Casper's bird of desire | various materials (textile, metal, paint, cola-bottle) | 2014

Project for the exhibition in the museum of the Cave in Algarinejo, Granada, Andalusia: H.K. created a memorial to Andalusia, in association with the 'eyes' of the robust medieval city wall in the cave museum who have seen many things. Her installation consists of a series of more than hundred painted prints on canvas of people and events that in a period of fifteen centuries and in many ways have influenced the development of Andalusia: by politics, literature and poetry, science, economics, religion, philosophy, visual arts, music and dance. The portrait gallery is a tribute to important, but faded heroes from the past. Underneath skulls. carefully stored in boxes, remembering those who do not occur in the narratives. Anonymous people who get value and expressiveness through their skull of gold.

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Installation of 100 painted prints of important persons and events from the Andalusian history and culture, on the antique stone wall of the Cave museum in Algarinejo, Spain | 24 x 18 cm each | 2010

Sculpture (and pupil-project) - within the framework of a study on the cultural historical inheritence of the places Asten and Someren, in commission of and in cooperation with the Varendonck-college in Asten.

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Installation of flippers in bronze on pedestal in the water of the river Aa (NL) | 2005

20 different little, bronze sheep-heads on the fence around a public playground together with a text in inox in the pavement of the street ‘DEZE PLEK : EEN WEEFSEL’ (this place : a tissue). Located in the Textile-district of Tilburg, a district interwoven with the past of the industry of wool fabrics in Tilburg.

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Work in public space, in commission of Tiwos (housing association of the city of Tilburg) | brons | 2003

Lost Souls has arisen from my concern with the processes in nature, in this case: the loss and growth of antlers every year. Antlers are a strange mark of beauty and power, but also a unique individual characteristic of every deer. Never identical, and there are so many... Year after year they are shed and re-grown again. I want to save those remains from oblivion by giving them a new identity; a registration number, which is an arrangement of my own birth date (3360 possibilities), that establishes a connection between myself and the animal. It shows my concern with respect to the entire phenomenon. I also partially give them a new soft purple skin, resembling the velvet (-skin) during the re-growth of the antlers every year.
People who buy and collect some 'lost souls', form an invisible connection to each other, the animal and me. Once I hope to reach the limit of the amount of 3360 pieces.
A complete installation of those graphically spacial marks attached to the wall creates an overwhelming impressive structure.
It calls for a reflection as well as respect for all (animal) creatures and also for an awareness of life, nature and human behavior.

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Installation | antlers, textileflock, registrationnumber | 2000 - present