It’s a Bird. No, it’s a Swan.
An attempt to capture Loes. 


Eva van Ooijen, ft. Loes. (in progress)


This work is about Loes, an artist who spent her life in obscurity.

In 2022, Eva van Ooijen came into possession of a number of exhibition maquettes. Curator Mindy Lamers made these maquettes in 2017 in preparation for a retrospective exhibition about the forgotten female artist Loes at the Stedelijk Museum Enschede. Despite the museum's interest in hosting an exhibition about Loes, Lamers never managed to execute her plans. She was unable to capture the essence of Loes works, which are elusive due to their variety in styles and mediums. The small scale models in these maquettes are all that remain of Loes' multifaceted oeuvre.

Eva is in the process of recreating Loes artworks that are reduced to stamp-sized photographs. Although a copy seems the highest achievable, inevitably you end up with a translation or interpretation of the original. Photography preserves and at the same time changes the qualities of what it captures.  This makes the original physical properties of the works difficult to trace. By making her own interpretations she does not only give Loes a voice, but in the gaps there is room for her own artistry.

The interpretations of Loes' works are a metaphor for what happens when you try to rewrite (art) history and retrospectively place women back into it. You cannot reclaim what is not documented: you can only try to fill in the gaps as best you can within a selective art historical canon.

 Loes as a construct represents a large group of women artists who, in a male-dominated art world, have never been heard or seen.

You can follow the proces here: MIRO 



  


It’s a Bird. No, it’s a Swan.
An attempt to capture Loes. 


Eva van Ooijen, ft. Mindy Lamers, ft. Loes.

This work is about Loes, an artist who spent her life in obscurity.

Unable to capture the essence of Loes, curator Mindy Lamers never executed her plans for a monographic exhibition about the forgotten female artist. When Eva van Ooijen discovered Mindy's plans it was clear to her that these needed to be shown. By exhibiting these models Eva wants to call attention to Loes’ artworks that  are impressive and allusive at the same time because of their variety in styles and mediums.

Eva uses her graduationshow as a testing ground in the hopes of getting Loes acknowledged by the art world

.


Graduation show, Master Artistic Research, KABK, 2022.
Read the KABK Graduation Exhibition review by Lena Tijen for MetropolisM.





(pictures ©Gert Jan van Rooij)

Email Exchange between Mindy Lamers and Eva van Ooijen:





Attachement to Mindy’s email: 




While the female is brooding the male has taken his observation post.

While the female is brooding the male has taken its observation post.












A Horse Dressed Up Like A Zebra 

A Horse Dressed Up Like A Zebra contains research for 4 episodes of the podcast
"Dear Dr. A." in which investigative journalist Andreas Nimmerdor tells the story of
a fraudulent scientist, Dr. A., who claims to have made an archaeological finding
in the Amazon region. 

Nimmerdor's proposal leans heavily on an archive that was donated to him by the artist Eva van Ooijen.
In return, she asks him to answer her question:
How to become a fraud?

This publication leads you through a jungle of stories, cases of fraud
scientific and non-scientific. All in an attempt to answer Eva's question. And at the same time trying to find out why someone like her wants to know how to do so.

Made into a book by Eva van Ooijen and presented as her Master thesis. 









Designed by:
Bureau Merkwaardig
Anouk de l’Ecluse & Daphne de Vries 
Thesis Supervisor:
Jasper Coppes 

You can find a PDF of the book here: A Horse Dressed Up Like A Zebra
Interested in a physical copy? Sent me an email: info@evavanooijen.nl

Dear Dr. A.


Installation shot: Dear Dr. A. Part of the: In Pending Waters, Yearly Master Artistic Research show 2021.


Dear Dr. A,
I am looking for you.
This is what I know about you so far: Watch video.