Blanket Talks

On August 16, Kunsthal KAdE will host a new edition of Blanket Talks within the exhibition Mella Jaarsma - Trouble Skirts. Invited are Willemien Brouwers, Inez Dekker and Wapke Feenstra. In this talk they share their experiences and reflect on developments, challenges and opportunities within the Dutch agricultural sector.

When: Saturday, Aug. 16
Time: 3 p.m. - 3:45 p.m.
Language: Dutch
Location: Kunsthal KAdE
Costs: free on presentation of a valid admission ticket

Blanket Talks/Selimut Bicara

Tiga Pasang Tangan (Three Pairs of Hands), 2024

Tree bark cloth has been used for centuries in Indonesia as clothing and cover material. Mella Jaarsma made the work Blanket Talks/Selimut Bicara, Tiga Pasang Tangan (Three Pairs of Hands) of this material, in the form of a patchwork quilt incorporating both the measuring distance between rice plants (21-23 cm) and patterns from the Javanese calendar. This calendar was traditionally used to determine the most fertile days for sowing and harvesting. Each time a work from the series Blanket Talks travels to a new place or country, three other people are invited to discuss agriculture and its pressing issues, such as food production, ecofeminism, deforestation and the changing landscape.

About the speakers

Willemien Brouwers took over the biodynamic soft fruit company Fruitweelde in 2020 at age 22. The company itself has existed since 2010 and was set up by another farmer's wife. In recent years, she noticed that it is not easy to grow healthy food. It is very labor-intensive and that takes a lot of time and money. At Fruitweelde, she has managed to create a small paradise where people, animals and plants work happily together.

Inez Dekker works as a doctoral student at Wageningen University where she is researching learning processes in an agricultural transition project in the Netherlands. This project, CropMix, focuses on ecology-based mixed cropping systems in arable farming. Here, Inez investigates how farmers, researchers, governments and farms, among others, learn together and how such collaborations can challenge and redefine structures of and relationships within existing systems. In addition to this work, Inez is also an active member of the international artist initiative and multivocal network the "Rural School of Economics" and focuses on the Dutch living landscape with Wapke Feenstra.

Wapke Feenstra is co-initiator of the artist collective Myvillages (2003) and Rural School of Economics (2019) and active for several decades in exploring the ecologies of the (flat) land - in all its physical, mental and social dimensions. In the fall, her exhibition Grounding in the Polder on display at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht.