Participant artists: Joyce Bloem, Paula Kouwenhoven, Masahide Kudo, Bart Lentze, Yvonne Muizert, Jun Sato, Dodog Soeseno, Tamaar Tóth Varjú, Noriko Yida,
Takata Yoshiki, Minami Yu and local artists.
From the 20th up to the 31st of December 2009 World Art Delft will organize for the sixth time an international art symposium. During this symposium plastic artists from The Netherlands and abroad will spend two weeks together to make one or more artworks, that will stay and be exhibited in the region of Yogya (Indonesia).
One of the main aspects of working together on one particular place is because of the interaction between the artists. Each art symposium of World Art Delft has its specific theme like Liberation, Recycle Art, Art & Technics, Homage to Delft.
This time the theme will be ´Art under the Volcano´. The choice of the theme has a fundamental relationship with the worldwide fear for the outbreak of calamities as an eventual effect of crises, climate change, painful social differences.
Aren´t we actually dancing on a volcano, which can erupt every moment?
The title is a paraphrase of one of the most important novels in world literature ´Under the volcano´ from Malcolm Lowry, who was born exactly 100 years ago. The theme of the book is a desire to restore a disturbed human relationship and a failure of a dream where wilfulness and misunderstanding seem to prevail.
Lowry´s story is situated at the foot of a volcano in Mexico.
World Art Delft has chosen the Mount Merapi in the middle of the island of Java as working place. The Merapi is situated near the cultural capital of Java, the city of Yogyakarta. It´s the most active volcano of the island and one of the 16 most dangerous volcanos of the world.
The choice of this location has to do with the roots of one of the curators of World Art Delft, Dodog Soeseno. The participants are of Dutch and Asian origin.
The artists will stay in Kiliurang near Yogyakarta and they will have a view on the Mount Merapi. They will see its permanent smoke plume: a sign of an everlasting activity. Any moment a hot glowing stream of lava can search a way out with a paradoxical power of destruction which may create afterwards a new fertility to the environment. A metaphor of creation of new life which surely must inspire the artists concerned.
The basic philosophy is that art may commit herself to give a view on a world where people work to avoid violent confrontations and human misery. L´art pour survivre as the rector of the University of Technology of Delft, prof. Jacob Fokkema, aptly puts it.
In the end the artworks will be auctioned for the benefit of good causes for local Indonesian people.
