Nominee Threshold Award Commercial Practices
Meet Robin van der Laan! Robin was nominated for the 2021 Threshold Award Commercial Practices with her graduation project ‘Wie Niet Weg is Wilt Gehoord Worden’ (Who Isn’t Gone Wants To Be Heard). In this interview, Robin tells us about her work and future plans.
Can you tell us a bit about your graduation project and how it came about?
My artistic work usually comes forth from a personal experience. I came up with this particular idea when my grandfather was first diagnosed with dementia. I wrote a story about his life up to the day of his death. The story speaks about how his identity was influenced by the things he endured during the Second World War, about how he dealt with his traumas and lived his life until he got diagnosed with dementia. It became visible how dementia has changed his life and his memories. In that period, I also did a lot of research on dementia, and one of the things that stood out to me the most was the way in which our brain creates a sense of identity. Our surroundings, where we live, and how people treat us, makes up a huge part of how we become as a person. When you have dementia, your surroundings are created by people treating you as a dement person. That, to me, is really problematic. So with my work I wanted to put pressure on the taboos around brain disorders.
I did this by visualising the experience of what it is like to live with dementia. I departed from my own assumptions about what dementia must look like. I started to draw and used parts of the story about my grandfather to make distorted images using a desktop scanner. These deformed images and texts represent the distortion of memories like in dementia. Then, I got in touch with Wendy Mitchell, a writer from the UK who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. In one of our conversations, she described how dementia really feels. This added a lot more depth to my research. She told me, for example, that stories or memories no longer appear in chronological order. This inspired my designing for the exhibition of my work.
Which themes or societal concerns are you addressing in your work, and how?
Dementia is a growing disease, and at some point we cannot undermine it any longer. I believe that in our society, there is a lot of room for improvement in the way we look at people with dementia and other brain disorders. And also in the way we treat them. Wendy still lives by herself and is supported by her daughters. Because of her surroundings, things are going really well for her. In the Netherlands, when you are diagnosed with dementia, you first enter a whole lot of nothing—an ’in between space’. Then, when the situation gets bad enough, you are admitted to a care home and never leave again. And I think that it is in that ‘in between space’ where we can do a lot more as a society to make life better for people with dementia.
As I mentioned before, I want to put pressure on taboos around brain disorders and how society treats people that suffer from them. I am not the kind of artist who likes to shock or confront her audience. I rather contribute by informing people and helping them experience what it must be like to live with dementia. By translating and sharing personal experiences, I enlarge and give insight into the problem. I think this might be a good first step towards breaking the taboo and acknowledging the seriousness of this societal problem.
What will you be working on in the near future? What are your next steps?
First of all, I would like to research our healthcare system better. My graduation project is mainly based on my personal experience and the story about my grandfather. But I understand this experience is not the same for everybody.
And besides that, I just wrapped up an exhibition in Coolhaven, Rotterdam and am preparing for WdKA’s Graduation Show in October.
To read more about Robin’s work, pay a visit to her Graduation Catalogue Page. Furthermore, her journey can be followed on her Website. The winners of the Threshold Award Commercial Practices will be announced during a festive ceremony as part of the Graduation Show. Keep an eye on our Graduation Show page for more information.
