#risk hazekamp

[fragrantblossoms]

Risk Hazekamp, Jimmy, 1999. 

[inneroptics]

Risk Hazekamp

[clauetheart]

ABA ART LAB

For as long as four months I have been dwelling on the influx of self-doubt, a sense of unpreparedness and impostor syndrome that crippled my ability to finalise my portfolio, to send a perfectly written cover letter and a frankly overqualified application to a role that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to apply to.

Aba Art Lab is a gallery and as the name suggests, an art room where artists create site-specific work in response to stimuli. At first glance, looking at their role of illustration intern seemed like an easily attainable internship that would fill the quota of work placement weeks that I required, and would allow me to spend time in Spain near my Catalonian family while learning the language. It doesn’t get more ideal than that. However overqualified I felt, however good the perks, I could not muster a portfolio that satisfied me, as it felt dishonest to who I am as a practitioner. True, all the work is mine, but did it really tell a story I wanted to describe to my practice? The answer is probably not.

Change is good, and growth is impossible without change, but like growing pains, it is a process that can cause quite a lot of discomfort and confusion. It paralysed me as I processed the changes that had already happened, and frankly, being able to travel for a month and a half and not *actually* making any decisions about my future was a blessing.

Working for the DDW was the best thing that happened to me in October, it was a thrilling experience that allowed me to meet designers, students and really inspirational makers. Looking at industry on all levels was insightful and decidedly developed my understanding of what possibilities lied in it other than illustration as a pure form.

It was also uncomfortable because I felt that the more I learned the more I distanced myself from the way I understood art and design, and decidedly it was changing my relationship with it. I could no longer apply as an illustrator to ABA, but was I a good enough designer to be accepted through that application?

Onomatopee really defined much of how I currently feel about the places I want to work with/for, but I will outline more specifically why here.

Applying for the job has had a cathartic effect on me, one that has been propelled by little victories like writting out s.i.p.’s with my design partner, Celine, receiving responses from curators like Risk Hazekamp and in general, a new years fresh and clean slate.

The final factor that contributed to me applying to the gallery was an email I received from Sarah, suggesting I considered the fact someone else had already applied for it with a different set of skills to mine. Mulling over that sentence I rather quickly decided that this was the way to proceed. It is almost like it clicked into place, and within two days I had a portfolio and cover letter ready and a CV that contributes to improving my chances thanks to working with DDW.  Soon after I received an email with a questionnaire which I responded to and returned yesterday. Now I am just in the process of waiting patiently and looking at potential flats to move in...I am not discouraged yet I am essentially a realist; I know that this application was the right move and I have a good feeling about it. 

I will copy the questionnaire here for the same reason as with the Newbridge call; to leave milestones for me to look back onto and to reevaluate my progress and skills.

[hackingmonuments]

War and Peace and In Between by Tatzu Nishi

thanks to Risk Hazekamp for the links!

http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/projects/project-19-tatzu-nishi

[clauetheart]

Exciting professionals:  Risk Hazekamp

Risk Hazekamp graduated from Willem de Kooning Academy and Jan van Eyck Academy exhibited solo and in contemporary art fairs such as Arco Madrid, Art Cologne, Photo Miami and Paris Photo. Risk is used to viewing the world from an outsider’s position and makes the audience consider a very different perspective when peering into the photographs and installations. Their identity and that of the photographs intertwine as Hazekamp explores the intersections between gender and identity and the role this plays in excluding or including individuals from gender normative society. 

Risk’s awareness and understanding of otherness via trans identity is the lens they use as a mechanism of questioning. This, they share in an interview with me, is the approach used as an entry point to discuss decolonial practice in their 2018 exhibition ‘The Dissolution of the West’. 

They revealed to me that it was around 2010-12 when they realised that to delve deeper into the construction of identity, and to see beyond their own, they had to open to switching positions and to sink into what taking place in the world as a white person had meant in that process.  This positioning as an outsider is part of a prism that considers multiple realities converging in a single individual and inevitably its relationship to the hegemonic narrative. To grapple with the pluralistic nature of our identities as well as our inherent privilege or lack thereof as a simultaneous happening is core to the decolonial practice Risk states is important that every individual face. 

[clauetheart]

Making mistakes is better than not making them.

Recently I went to a show at the Pennings Foundation by Risk Hazekamp, an artist known for challenging established notions of normalcy and nominations of the self. In the show, she tackles colonial legacies, the concept of ‘the other’, the reification of privilege and the way that these intersecting gazes create dichotomies, knot points which can be used in turn to dismantle outdated preconceptions. 

I talked to the invigilator, and although she offered brilliant insight into the little anecdotes of this or another piece, my thirst for exploring the questions shooting in my mind was not satiated. She suggested I wrote a piece for their website, to contact Risk as well. Sheer happiness fueled my step as I left the exhibit, wondering what would I way to the curator. 

I have been struggling to order my ideas, to collate my questions. I’m altogether interested in the content as much as her way of putting it together and how she herself came to encounter the topic and tackle it. I’m fascinated by the way she single-handedly pulled off a show of that stature, and how varied the work in it is, albeit focused in photography as a medium, the use of the definition was pushed in many ways. I'm deeply intrigued and impressed by this person as she checks a lot of the boxes I myself have been exploring recently as a practitioner (curation, decolonization theorisations, art installations).

It has been a month now, and although I mustered the courage to send the email praising the expo and suggesting an interview, I have yet to ask anything. I feel so blocked and uninspired, I feel I know nothing about the questions I supposedly want to ask, nor the field of curation. I feel like an impostor. I suppose I feel intimidated by the idea of sounding like an amateur, and not reaching the bar I have unconsciously set myself.

But I'm stopping this right now. It has been long enough and I owe it to myself to take the risk, to fail, to err. I was quick to forget my favourite piece of advice, that one doesn’t ever stop learning, and that those who truly inspire me are those who are in constant evolution, renewing themselves and pushing forwards by being fearless. Because fearlessness is not about never failing, but knowing that you will and getting up after it and doing it over and over again, walking one step at a time and being gracious with yourself for it.

[kionatramperopendesignposts-blog]

Risk Hazekamp

Je ziet iemand met een baard, maar is het wel een man? En is dat nou een Marlboro-man – of lijkt dat maar zo? En die drag queens – zijn dat niet eigenlijk vrouwen die mannen nadoen die vrouwen spelen? In haar werk gaat er een wereld open, waar er oneindig veel meer variaties bestaan dan alleen maar 'mannen' en 'vrouwen'.