Een willekeurige verzameling dieren die langs de Lek (zouden kunnen) wonen

Ietje Meerman received a contribution to develop new work. With the project A random collection of animals that (could) live along the Lek, Ietje immerses herself in the river landscape of Culemborg to search for animals. During this research period she will focus on the relationship between the animals and the landscape and will experiment with performance. How can performance contribute to the telling of her animal stories? What new performative forms can she explore and deepen within her artistic practice? And is it possible to involve animals in this?

Ietje is an autonomous visual artist and graduated from BEAR (Base for Experiment, Art & Research) Fine Art at ArtEZ in Arnhem in 2023. Within her artistic practice she explores the relationship between animals and humans. She depicts and tells poetic narratives about animals, which emerge from the tension between observations, memories and pretending. Ietje wonders how she can tell a story about both animal and human together with animals. She sees her work as a 'condensation': as in being a fiction, a mythologization, a condensation, a compilation, an (act of) poetry. Within the narratives, different animals play the leading role, such as a story about what it means to fall in love with the dagger pigeon, about deer that can whistle or why flies fly around cows.