Julia Geerlings

“I believe that art is in close connection with the world around us, within our daily lives and the big questions that come with it. It is therefore valuable for art to be experienced directly on the street or in a social place such as in an office building.”

You are a curator & writer and recently became the director of A Tale of A Tub, when/how did your affinity with art start?

My affinity with art began at a young age. My father (a retired general practitioner) often took me to museums and was an art collector himself. His collection could be described as extremely varied, ranging from Russian socially realistic paintings to Balinese ceremonial textiles and everything in between! The story behind every artwork is important to him and we share that feeling. Now, the roles have been reversed: I take him to exhibitions and I try to teach him more and more about contemporary art! He is very conscientious and looks at every object and every video from start to finish in an exhibition, which he likes to discuss afterwards. I think that’s beautiful to see.

Do you also collect privately?

My partner Éric Giraudet de Boudemange and I have mainly collected works by befriended artists. In the meantime, several works by Admire Kamudzengere, Thomas Raat, Karishma D’Souza, Dan Walwin, Matthieu Cossé, Philipp Kremer, Jasper Hagenaar, Ran Zhang, Leidy Churchman and Margot Zanstra are adorning the walls. We hide the works of Philipp Kremer and Leidy Churchman when we put our apartment on Airbnb because of the explicit sexual scenes. Yet we always get very positive reactions to the variety within our works. We are indeed very attached to it.

What would you like to bring about within the art world?

I want to offer a stage to artists who, with their work, reflect on social and current themes. I have specialized in presenting contemporary art at unusual locations such as a church, a canal house, a former military fortress and now a former bathhouse; A Tale or a Tub. It's exciting when the location and specific social or political context are included in the development of a project. From September on, Niekolaas Lekkerkerk and I will take over from the current management and we will open with 'The Water Party', a solo presentation by David Bernstein and 'The Honorary Vertebrate Club', a group exhibition on marine life, adaptation, and tentacular thinking (after theory) from Donna Haraway. With ‘The Water Party’, Bernstein explores the social and spiritual potential of water and will transform A Tale of a Tub back into a communal bathhouse where people can come together and talk to each other.

Do you think it is important to show art in a company and why?

Absolutely. I think it is very important to have art outside museums or art institutions. I believe that art is in close connection with the world around us, within our daily lives and the big questions that come with it. It is therefore valuable for art to be experienced directly on the street or in a social place such as in an office building. I think that in addition to the aesthetic argument, art is also stimulating for employees in a company. In hospitals, patients seem to feel even better when they are surrounded by art.

Lennart Lahuis | Parrot
2015 | inkjetprint on wood, beeswax, paper on glass
35 x 50 CM

"The title is crucial for this work: ‘Parrot’. At first glance, nonetheless, you don’t necessarily see anything that resembles a parrot at all. A glance of some colors might catch your eye, but they are covered by a layer of semi-transparent beeswax that obstruct the image. The Dutch artist Lennart Lahuis uses stock photos that come with photo frames, before you exchange them for your own personal photos. Lahuis is fascinated by these interchangeable temporary images, which is significant for our general disposable culture. In 2015, I invited Lahuis to a group exhibition in Paris, where he applied one of his water texts to the floor of the exhibition space. Volatility and the disclosure and disguise of information also played an important role in this work."

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Otobong Nkanga | Alterscapes: Playground
2005–2015 | Lambda print
67 x 50 CM

"I am very fond of the work of the Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga and the way she approaches complex themes within her work, such as the exploitation of Africa by the West and the depletion of natural resources that go with it. This work consists of three photos, in which Nkanga's silhouette looms above a withered landscape situated on her lap. The landscape refers to her home country Nigeria and how the local oil extraction has disastrous consequences for the environment and the African landscape."

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Pieter Paul Pothoven | Sample 2/1, Sorghpar, Adit#1, from the series 'Laguard'
2010–2015 | C-print
80 x 100 CM

"Just like Nkanga, Pieter Paul Pothoven uses minerals and materials to illustrate the relationship between socio-political history and the landscape. The work consists of powerful close-ups of various lapis lazuli rocks. Pothoven has done intensive research into the use and extraction of lapis lazuli; a precious blue mineral that has a rich history. In ancient Egypt, for example, the rock was used in the death mask of Tutankhamun and in medieval and renaissance it was used as a blue colorant ultramarine in painting. Pothoven has researched the inhospitable mines in northern Afghanistan, where the poorest of the poor manage to extract the precious material in miserable conditions. The titles of this series of photos are derived from the categorization of the miners, who use 13 different variants selected on color and structure."

Jennifer Tee | Tampan Womb of Time #2
2018 | print on museum etching paper
140 x 165 CM

"As a fourth and final work, I would like to highlight Jennifer Tee's powerful and layered work from the collection, ‘Tampan Womb of Time #2’. At first sight, the work looks like woven textile, but it consists of dried and compressed tulip leaves. The work is made up of geometric patterns in the so-called Tampan style. This hand-woven ceremonial textile from the Lampung region in South Sumatra shows scenes from daily life with the motif of a stylized ship. These woven cloths bear witness to a long trade history, which the tulip petals referring to the historic tulip trade. In addition, the work also refers to her own Chinese-Indonesian origin and to the boat trip that her father made from Java to the Netherlands in the 1950s after independence."