Embrace the Silliness
Project details
- Year
- 2024
- Programme
- Bachelor – Illustration
- Practices
- Autonomous Practices
- Minor
- Public & Private
The disappearance of different cultural spots in Rotterdam is sadly becoming the city’s noticeable phenomenon. As an artist and a frequent visitor of some of the disappeared locations such as Poing, Weelde or studios, I do not find it easy to see more of these places be erased from the city’s cultural map. Last year I organized a march for Schieblock, that was against the disappearance of Schieblock’s culture and made funny looking costumes for the participants of the march. It looked silly, but effective, as many people gave us positive reactions.
My graduation project builds upon this march, but now with more focus on embracing silliness in form of illustrations and publications. Using illustrations as a medium, I interviewed inhabitants and visitors of those gone locations and documented the drawing conversations through zines, which are presented in a playful looking kiosk installation, that I tested out in public space. The WHERE?KIOSK serves as a home to publications that reminisce the city’s disappearing cultural locations and the effect they had on its inhabitants. I would like to further experiment with this kiosk in different settings and continue engaging others in this work as well.
Embracing silliness, multicolor palette, and visuals of flowers and boxes. These are one of the repeating elements in Nina’s work which characterize her as an illustrator with drawing obsessions. The infatuation with repetitiveness is a method through which she likes to explore and visually experiment with topics more in depth. Whether her work reflects her daily mix of thoughts or observations around her, you will always find them coded in a colorful composition of different elements spreading throughout the whole page. She also likes to hack the space with 3D objects often for activistic purposes, such as with her letter costumes for March for Schieblock or a kiosk stand installation commenting on effects of gentrification on culture in Rotterdam.