Marijke van Warmerdam

Everything in the work of Marijke van Warmerdam revolves around the surprised glance. Light is thrown on quite ordinary objects, actions and situations through her way of filming and photographing from unexpected angles, thus creating new perspectives. We see a girl making a handstand, a hat floating around on the wind in a ravine, a man enjoying a shower, a boy in swimming trunks staring out at a lake. It is all familiar and yet we have never seen it like this. This amazement about people and things has a disarming effect, endowing us with the fresh, joyous gaze of a child again.

For Sonsbeek 2008 Marijke van Warmerdam has filmed the eye of an elephant. The elephant has existed much longer than man, has a sharp gaze and an enormous memory. ‘Everything begins with seeing and remembering,’ says Van Warmerdam. Under a specially built lean-to in the park she is showing a film loop of the giant eye wreathed by thick, heavily wrinkled skin. It is quietly observing us from a world view that does not resemble ours in any way at all, just as we are looking at this elephant’s eye without any idea of what it is seeing and remembering. Two worlds facing each other and the question in the middle as to who we are and where we are.

During the Sonsbeek Procession a real elephant stood on the Grote Markt waiting to be draped with the cloth that was carried in the Procession by a member of the Guild of Artists. Its eye was embroidered on the cloth.