Scarlett Hooft Graafland for HRW

Scarlett Hooft Graafland

- In what way is ART a tool for activism?

In my view, the power of good art is that it shows what hasn’t been shown yet, or that it implies what otherwise cannot be objectified. In that way it can alter our world and our conception of our reality. And thus it can indirectly change our behavior.

- In what way does your chosen piece for HRW reflect 2020?

My work ‘Six Bowlers’ really symbolizes 2020 for me. The photograph is a record of a highly choreographed live performance. Five elderly ladies standing side by side in the great void of the worlds largest salt desert in Bolivia. A sixth figure next to them, seems to have vanished from under her bowler hat, erased from the scene. Or is still present but invisible, except for her bowler and its shadow.

The five women that are present and centrally visible are Aymara indigenous women in their colorful traditional outfits. The question I ask myself, when looking at the photograph, is this:  how long will all five remain present and visible? How soon will they too become erased? That question makes their presence explicit - amplifies being there, being alive. That question for me is the main theme of the year 2020, the Corona year. A year of lockdown and quarantine, a year of solidarity with the older generation, the most vulnerable ones. 

- What gives you hope? 

The sense of being alive and free. I like traveling, traveling to the most isolated corners on earth. Most of my journeys extend over long periods, spending many weeks within unknown natural and cultural surroundings, that force on me the sense of being alive and free. Free to sculpt my own identity, apparently unhindered by my past and the behavioral demands of society. 

During my travels I create my work. Often, I want to capture an essential aspect of a local community, that suggests timelessness and continuity, and set it off against the immense, natural surroundings. That way, by showing isolated, culturally meaningful objects in the context of the untamable, ever changing natural world, I try to relate to the essential experience of being. The experience of change and freedom.

BIO

Documenting her own bizarre interventions in harsh landscapes, Scarlett Hooft Graafland uses a combination of photography, performance, and site-specific sculpture to create images that are surreal and fantastical. Hooft Graafland journeys deep into remote, difficult terrains—Bolivian salt flats, the Canadian Arctic, the islands Socotra (Yemen) and Vanuatu—which she uses as stark and striking backdrops to playful juxtapositions and installations often inspired by the local population and mythology. Many times she would live for weeks together with these local communities;

“My natural response to fitting in is through a performance or installation, which is photographed with my analogue camera without the use of any kind of digital manipulation. This is what I find so powerful about photography: through its association with the representation of truth, and through its ability to document reality, it can also represent the irrational and the fantastic.”

www.scarletthooftgraafland.com Instagram: @scarletthooftgraafland

This artwork is located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. WILLAS contemporary will facilitate artwork release within 21 days after payment. Can be picked up by the buyer, or shipped at the buyer´s expense.