This year, Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede presented ‘Who owns the (rural) land?’, an exhibition in three parts about how humans interact with the environment and how artists respond to it. That doesn’t make you happy. It is educational.
If only because a source of misery is identified. The Bible book of Genesis contains the following command: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that cometh upon the earth. earth crawls!’
Who owns the (rural) land? shows, using historical objects and contemporary art, that the core of the problem lies in industrialism and massiveness, in the growing population that has made large-scale exploitation necessary. With all its consequences. First for the landscape, flora and fauna. Then for the person himself.
Circular thinking was already practiced long before the Bible
What continues to haunt the mind goes beyond the idea of the end times. To compensate, Enschede also offers prospects. Long before the invention of the Bible, people were thinking circularly. The group of people who believe that the world should be about giving and taking between species is now growing again – that is also a cycle.
Then there is the realization that museums provide ideas for the future. Nothing wrong with that Traveling with Vincent in Assen , the lives of Christoffel and Kate Bisschop in Leeuwarden and the Rolling Stones in Groningen. But apparently more is possible. Or better yet: it can also be done differently.
Can still be seen until the end of January.