Juul Kraijer
© Juul Kraijer
“Faces and bodies are a vehicle for meaning rather than portrayals of individuals.The images elude traditional iconography. In its place, use is made of physical sensations granting access to the inner mind. Without citing literally I'm often employing the Surrealists' grammar of alienation; mirroring, fusing of disparate entities, animating an object, objectifying a human bodypart or casting a dazzling web of shadows on it.Personally, I shrink back from interpreting my work, considering the fact that the meaning of a drawing or photograph is always ambiguous. If it were unambiguous, I would have chosen a more direct form than the poetic–associative one of visual art. Visual art is a good medium for giving sharp definition to that which, due to its not being finite, cannot be captured in language and theory”-
JUUL KRAIJER
Dutch artist Juul Kraijer’s photographic practice recreates a surreal, poetic and metaphoric world of uncanny relationships between the human body and certain elements from nature without any literal representation. In her imagery, the human is just a physical container of the self, without any further relevance.
In this exhibition two of her thought provoking photographic series “Muse “ and “Chimaera” are equally engagingly supported by 2 of her videos “ Spawn” and Prologue”
“Muse” is a series of non represental portrait of female models without the narrative of the character as well as representation of an era. Emerging out of an infinite background of darkness, the heads and hands are objectified into a classical still life incorporated with elements from nature like snakes, scorpions, bugs, animal skeletons, birds and sometimes even self in form of a reflection, creating a hauntingly mysterious space.
Looking at these images, the two worlds appear to be coherent together, yet forming an unsettling curiosity.
The photographs of the heads with the snakes in particular are quite predominantly noticeable and appear like a peaceful coexistence. On the other hand the video “ Spawn” tends to make the viewer reevaluate the contradicting moment. The human face which throughout appears giving into a calmness, with the snakes unawarely releasing themselves, crawling all over the human face and head without any realization or fear.
“Chimaera” is a series of images based on human body contortion, deliberately devoid and denying femininity. The bodies break their own reality of human form to transform themselves into reminiscents of unidentified and sometimes identified forms from nature, recreating itself into an illusion through the acts of a female contortionist and a Butoh dancer who playfully exhibit moments of hypothesis for the viewers.
In her video “ Prologue” the body leisurely contorts itself within an almost transparent womb like covering, making us edgily and patiently contemplate throughout, yet elude the definite.
Juul is an artist who transforms the ephemeral art of performance thoughtfully and aesthetically on a permanent surface with help of the lens both in form of still and video.
Ironically, I find the exhibition distinctly relevant in the present context, where man is known to have a history of wrestling against nature and even considered a narcissistic recreater of a world of his own egocentric convenience through various unnatural mental and physical landscapes. Abruptly we are now unearthing our own harsh reality. We are calmly introspecting a speculative and uncertain existence, trying hard to discipline ourselves through an attempt to realise our true place within this universe and its equilibrium.
© Sandeep Biswas, 2020
All images © Juul Kraijer