Anouk Kruithof - Aquatronic, 2021
Special and exclusive edition
Inkjet print: 30 x 40 cm
Edition of 25
Including the self published book Trans Human Nature
96 pages, full color, black&white
size 24 x 32 cm
ISBN: 978-94-91677-23-6
Edition of 500
ABOUT THE WORK
Trans Human Nature is the story of a personal traversal and an artistic exploration that Anouk Kruithof made in and around Botopasi, a small village in the middle of the Amazon rainforest in Suriname that is only connected to civilization through the Suriname river. In this village she works in symbiosis with nature and the population. Settling her practice in this context had an impact on what she was producing there, or rather what was being produced there. Kruithof takes prints (made on fabrics, organic silk or pvc plastics) of her collection of digital stock photos representing our technological future aboard the canoes that connect the village to the outside world, takes them on forest hikes, immerses them in the river and hides them in the greenery, while observing their capacity to becoming one with a wild, powerful and sometimes also violent nature.
The images she produces then come to relate a self-transformative process through the contact with a dense and tropical nature. What happens to becoming stone, to becoming plant? What happens to these hypnotic experiences in which we dilate our pores and our thoughts? Between fascination and fantasy, we trail the artist’s attempts to come closer, to hybridize wild nature and to produce there an aqueous, liquid surface reflecting our humanity. The vegetal and natural materials intertwine with the faces of transhumanism, distorts them, covers them, multiplies folds and reflections to project onto it mutant, blurred and fertile identities. She explores the myth of a hybridized, polyphonic and harmonious nature, which we would like to visit ourselves to lay out there our own fantasies of transformation for the self and for others.
Excerpted from ‘What happens to becoming stone, to becoming plant’, a text written by Mathilde Roman for Anouk Kruithof, Trans Human Nature.
ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER
The work of Anouk Kruithof (NL, 1981) was part of group exhibitions in renowned institutions like Het Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She had solo shows in galleries in the Netherlands and abroad. In 2009 Foam selected her as a Foam Talent and in 2017 she presented her solo exhibition ¡Aguas!, part of Foam's Next Level series. The series is aimed at introducing the wider public to innovative art by relatively young artists who are making radical new use of the medium of photography.
Kruithof won many awards and prizes, for instance the audience award of the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs (2016), Charlotte Köhler Prize (2014) and the Hyères Photography Jury Grand Prize (2011) and in 2021 her work was selected for The Gallery of Honour of Dutch photography at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam.
In addition to her art practice Anouk Kruithof also writes, lectures, gives workshops, teaches, curates, and participates in social projects. She is co-creator, director and jury member of The Anamorphosis Prize, which awards $10,000 to the creator of the best self-published photo-book from the previous year. The prize was launched for the first time in spring 2015 and celebrated 3 editions. She is a frenetic artist- bookmaker and published 13 books so far.
She lives and works between Brussels Belgium, the Netherlands and her wooden house in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest in Botopasi Surinam.
ABOUT BUYING THIS WORK
Most photo prints have a small white border around all sides. For a framer this border is necessary to be able to frame it properly. The print will be carefully wrapped and send as an insured package. You will receive an e-mail with a Track & Trace code when the package is on its way. A framed copy is on display at Foam Editions, the gallery on the third floor of Foam Fotografiemuseum. For more information or questions about buying this print, please contact the Foam Editions team.
T. +31 (020) 5516500
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