Detail of ‘Megalith’, the apocalyptic artwork with which Marit Westehuis exhibits.
A protest by climate activists caused a riot in the Groninger Museum. This threatened to overshadow the Megalith exhibition by the Groningen Marit Westerhuis. After a week and a half things have calmed down. But what exactly is there to see?
‘A lot of Germans,’ says the attendant of the Groninger Museum. “Yesterday too. They mainly come for the JR: Chronicles exhibition.” Perhaps the man and woman who enter the Coop Himmelb(l)au pavilion before me are also Germans. I could ask, but they walk as if in a hurry to walk the dog and follow the path along the green colored field.
The two seem to pay no real attention to the ominous message that artist Marit Westerhuis (Winschoten, 1992) wants to convey with Megalith. It does suit the artwork to be alone in the enormous space during the viewing. After all, you don’t see people in it, Westerhuis shows a post-apocalyptic landscape, a world after the human era. The Groningen artist calls this the post-Anthropocene, and in doing so she agrees with geologists who call the time in which we now live anthropocene, the era in which the earth and the atmosphere experience the disastrous consequences of human activity. In her own way, Westerhuis questions the relationship between man, myth and nature.
Inky black oil barrel pipes
Megalith comprises nine works, the largest of which is the most eye-catching. It is that hilly landscape that the route leads past. Poison green is the moss, poisonous green is also the water. The thick, inky pipes, made from oil drums, jutting up from the ground are reminiscent of submarine periscopes. Apart from the vegetation, there is no sign of life. It is plastic. Real moss was also not allowed by the museum, which was afraid of vermin. “I also support that,” says Westerhuis. “It also had to be fake.” The material will be given a second life and will be reused, among other things to give elderly people with dementia a garden feeling.
The World After the Human Age
Traditional Dutch cosiness and a cheerful spring day look different; Megalith has nothing to do with that of course. Rather, this is the imagination of gloom, the sad result of human failure. The formations in the landscape refer to megaliths, prehistoric stone monuments built by humans to perform ritual acts; the Drenthe dolmens, the English Stonehenge. Westerhuis shows such a stone circle in one of the seven capsules that are set up in a dark room. In what appears to be an ancient Greek temple, a slogan is written: “Abandon an hope ye who enter here.” In another display case, a pumpjack continues to pump neurotically. To what? When man has exhausted the earth, not much will come out of the bottom.
Inspired by Dante
Anyone who visits Megalith and takes in the thinking behind it will say that it is not surprising that Fossil Free Culture NL (Fossielvrij NL) seized the opening of the exhibition a week and a half ago to make a point. Inspired by Dante, the demonstrators backed up, a reference to the punishment that future predictors receive in his sketched hell. The citizens’ movement wants to break the power of oil, coal and gas companies and fight for climate justice. “The climate crisis is here and now.” Westerhuis invited the activists and called for the surprise and dismay of Groninger Museum director Andreas Blühm to cut ties with Gasunie and GasTerra, sponsors of the art institution, during the opening.
Rune stones with symbols and hieroglyphs
The protest action shot Blühm the wrong way, but in the meantime the announced conversation has taken place. The storm has passed, the exhibition can still be visited. And Westerhuis, winner of Young Grunn Artist III, has made her point. She takes the reactions on Twitter to the bargain. “Someone called me hypocritical left-wing rascal, I think that’s a nice one.” Was she afraid beforehand that this would overshadow her work? “Actually not, because although you can see things separately, my work is about the climate crisis and the fossil industry. In addition, I grew up in East Groningen, so I think it is necessary to draw attention to this.”
On my way to the exit I see placards on the moss around a corner full of symbols and hieroglyphs. Or are they tombstones? Westerhuis calls them rune stones, referring to how in Scandinavia places where historical events took place are interpreted. Here it can be seen as a legacy, as information for the future man. Like NASA wants to serve aliens.
During a quick round of JR: Chronicles I then see a text on the wall: ,, Art is not supposed to change the world, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world †