Mnemosyne Atlas 2.0
For the ‘Young Art Night’ at Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven I was invited to show my work ‘Once Upon Many Times’. I also got the chance to create three new pieces for the occasion. Therefor I took three texts inspired by the greek muses Melpomene (Tragedy), Calliope (eloquence & epic poetry) and Urania (astronomy) and illustrated them with Google Image search results. Other then in ‘Once Upon Many Times’ (book), I tried to capture the full range of narrative on one single canvas.
The text for ‘Melpomene’ came from the book ‘Lord Jim’ by Joseph Conrad who is a classic figure in literature that stands for being helplessly exposed to misfortune and disaster. ‘Calliope’ was inspired by the text ‘For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that wasn’t there’ by Anthony Huberman. In it he elaborates on different concepts of unknowing and the sublimity of not knowing anything. Finally ‘Urania’ was inspired by a poem about space travel in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s ‘Die Physiker’ (the physicists) in which a brave group of scientists and adventurers drifts into the endless hostilities of space and die dreadful, senseless deaths.
All together the three texts/ muses resemble three essential strategies to deal with the omnipresent human fear of death and failure, which are surrender, humor and science.