Besides the lines colors and follow your childish fantasy. It is something that some people are only too happy to do. This is also the case in Norg at the Folly Art Festival. “Not everything has to be very serious,” says Ina Reynders-Veldman of the organization. “Look and think again at your sandbox time. Then you were allowed to do everything.”
At Folly Art, artists make objects without having a function immediately. “Actually a ‘useless structure’,” says Reijnders-Veldman. “It actually comes from the 17/18th century that people with large estates had a lot of money and did not know what to do with it and thought: I’m going to build something in my garden that is impressive.”
That does not mean that there is no meaning behind it. For example, 18-year-old Nienke de Bruijn from the Eindhoven area searched for depth in her work. “If I have to make things in handicraft, I often do that from a kind of inner passion. This time I wanted to challenge myself to tackle a social issue.”
Her structure symbolizes the home crisis that she and her friends are currently dealing with because they cannot find a student room. “There is a block tower to see and I have tried to portray the childish, playful. But if you really look at it with adult eyes, you will see the instability of the tower again,” she explains. “The housing market is just as unstable at the moment because there are just so few options for starters. It is way too expensive or much too small. The housing market is just over and I want to show that.”
The artwork was great and what started as a school assignment has now been given a place in the walking route. In addition to the work of De Bruijn, visitors can watch 20 other follies in and around Norg. From huge floating greenhouses to a circus of bicycle wheels, you can’t think of it that way or it is there. “It’s a range of wonderful things,” says Reynders-Veldman. “Every maker has a wonderful story why he built this and what concerns him. Actually, there is always a reflection of what is going on in society.”