Ana Maria Tavares

Ana Maria Tavares is interested in the way that environments are designed and how they influence our state of mind. Her critique takes the form of building imitations of modernist environments that suggest an atmosphere of luxury and progress. She does this with a minimum of means but with great sophistication, as could be seen in 2001 in De Vleeshal in Middelburg where the visitor was completely won over by the atmosphere of an airport lounge.

With Sonsbeek 2008, Ana Maria Tavares is breaking new ground. She was amazed at the art of engineering with which enormous amounts of water are kept under control in the Netherlands and started researching Sonsbeek Park’s carefully designed brooks. With the aid of a pendulum she discovered five junctions of underground streams, known as ‘fountainheads’. At every fountainhead there now lies a large circular mirror surrounded by a broad stone edge in which a mantra is engraved: ‘Desire, Deserve. Delight, Still Life, Sparkling Water, Still Water, Sparkling Life.’ The stones also refer to the rich, but unknown history of these streams. This is why the work is called Mnemosyne, after the Greek goddess of memory.

During the Procession the Sonsbeek Guild carried a rack with hundreds of ribbons in the colour of water. The ribbons refer to a festival in the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia, where black women carry pitchers of fragrant water through the streets. A reminder of the time when slaves had to purge the church of evil influences with fragrant water.