To print is to leave traces

Starting May 24, you can visit two exhibitions at Kunsthal KAdE: Mella Jaarsma - Trouble Skirts and Roy Villevoye - Imaginable Lives.

Prior to the exhibition, Mella Jaarsma is doing a residency at Cotton Printing Company The Full Mill in Amersfoort. Featuring wooden shoes with patterns on the soles inspired by old batik motifs: Parang and Parang Rusak. Each step leaves an imprint, a symbolic connection between past and present. 

The work is a tribute to Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006), who described colonial history from the Indonesian perspective. Minke, the main character in his book Footprints, based on journalist Tirto Adhi Soerjo, confronts racism in colonial Jakarta, including the compulsory wearing of traditional clothes instead of European ones. In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company benefited from the thriving sits trade, printed cotton and silk fabrics from India. These influenced textile traditions and rituals from West Sumatra to the Moluccas. To control the trade, they began producing sits in Holland. The first cotton printing plant of Europe originated in Amersfoort. The patterns later found their way into Dutch costume.