Biography
Rita Hoofwijk is a Dutch artist. The motivation for her work always arises from a specific location or context. The work itself materializes in various forms, from spatial interventions and installations to audio and text. It explores the possibilities of the environments in which it finds itself, either mentally or physically, and seems to ask for a reconsideration of an (initial) observation. What emerges is a collection of work of different form and scale, which sometimes can only take place once and other times only exists in repetition.
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Photo: Rita Hoofwijk
In residentie facing faces
06.03.2017 – 11.03.2017
facing faces is an installation that makes people look at people. This performative installation is a proposal for thinking about how we view and perceive each other. With this installation, Rita Hoofwijk asks what happens in our thoughts when we look the people around us in the eye every day. Like an analogue film, a reel of portraits by Rita Hoofwijk is played before their eyes. Each face has a title that tells how this person is seen. That description colors the view, remains incomplete, offers the viewer a framework and asks the question: “How do you see yourself?”. What matters is that we look longer and more intensively together again.
In residentie Raaklijn
01.08.2024 – 01.08.2024
“There are seven other sentries on the island, and my feet can’t be everywhere at once – but my voice can.”
Scattered across the island, visitors embody the seemingly invisible boundary between the festival and the protected nature reserve. “Think of it as a line in the sand: a boundary that is not meant to separate two parts, not to divide, but to forever entwine both sides.” (Karen Barad)
From now on, we call this boundary the tangent (raaklijn). Visitors can approach this threshold at a time of their choosing and take up a sentinel there. Rather than a limitation, the tangent functions as an invitation to stay (here). Raaklijn is a multi-year collaboration between Oerol Festival, SoAP Maastricht and Rita Hoofwijk. Starting in 2025, we will invite a different artist and discipline to approach the tangent for four years.
In residentie Danu
01.11.2024 – 01.11.2024
From the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the river flows. The river flows and meets a city along the way. When the waters of the Danube reach Budapest, they are just over halfway through the journey. It takes ten days to reach us, and in another ten days it will mix with the salty water of the sea. The river has been making this journey for over a million years and has seen Budapest many times. ‘Danu’ translates as ‘the flowing one’ or as ‘she who was before everything else.’ During the performance, the audience, divided into two groups of equal size, gathers on either side of the river. They form a line and descend simultaneously, step by step, towards the water. Danu is an audio performance that uses headphones, a voice from the other side, and tap water with a pinch of salt.