The nine symptoms that were indicated in the DSM IV as typical of borderline personality disorder say a lot about the current state of society. At the exhibition Borderline Times the focus shifts from the individual to the collective.
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Lotta Blokker
Introduction
When Lotta Blokker (Amsterdam 1980) first encountered the work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, during a secondary school excursion to the Musée Rodin in Paris, she felt that her destiny had been determined. Read more
The high points of the history of the art of sculpture can be seen in her works: from the Venus of Milo via Donatello’s Mary Magdalene to The Thinker by Auguste Rodin. But she also takes work by the great painters such as Vincent van Gogh, Lucian Freud and Marlene Dumas and translates them into sculptures. What all these examples from art history have in common with Blokker is a powerful and sensitive oeuvre that captivate and enchant the viewing public. Her work can be found in private collections from Europe to the United States and is regularly featured in international exhibitions.
“It’s a boy”
The sculpture “It’s a boy” is one of the figures from ‘The Hour of the Wolf’ series – on which Blokker worked for five years – that transports visitors on a nocturnal journey to various emotions. Read more
There are no further diversions in the night and feelings can no longer be suppressed. Blokker describes her project as a nocturnal, intimate confrontation with our self: “What I find so attractive in people is their sincere emotion. That is something you feel at night mostly, when people have to fall back upon themselves.” Her bronzes are more than figures of people of flesh and blood. They are symbolic portraits that function as a mirror, so that we can recognize ourselves.
“It’s a boy” and ethics of care
To support the content of our website we have chosen the image “It’s a boy” because there are two figures involved. Good care is fundamentally relational. Although the motivation of Lotta Blokker herself might have been different, we see this image as symbolic for a distinguishing characteristic of care ethics. Read more
Blokker describes a kind of decentralization of the ego during the time that she is dedicated to the practice of sculpting. The contact with her models is important in connection to her work: indeed, as it shows, in trying to capture the soul of the other person. Here we see a certain similarity with the process of care giving.
The epistemological starting point in care ethics, both in practices of care and in carrying out qualitative inquiries, is empirically grounded in the daily lived life of specific and concrete caregivers and care receivers in their context. It is this reality of daily life, the concreteness of vulnerable human beings in the sculptures of Blokker, that appeals to us.
In a care ethical view, care is not only identified with the reduction of vulnerability that is desired. Good care is in itself a realization of acceptance of vulnerability, or contingency, guided by the consciousness that it inevitably goes together with all that makes human life a good or at least livable life.
Lotta Blokker. Sculpturen – sculptures – Skulpturen. The hour of the wolf. The Hour of the Wolf. Museum De Fundatie, Panoramamuseum and Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum. Waanders & De Kunst, 2015.
http://www.lottablokker.com/
By Brecht Molenaar and Jeannet van de Kamp
Call for Abstracts for seminar ‘Care and Counselling as Social Action. Interreligious Cooperation in Urban Migration Contexts’
You are invited to participate in the poster session of the Seminar ‘Care and Counselling as Social Action. Interreligious Cooperation in Urban Migration Contexts’.
Please submit your abstract until 30 June, 2016 and don’t forget to register. Continue reading Call for Abstracts for seminar ‘Care and Counselling as Social Action. Interreligious Cooperation in Urban Migration Contexts’
Call for Papers for Conference “Relation, Vulnerability, Love”
From the 15th till the 17th of September 2016 research group Anthropos (Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven) will organize a conference on the following theme: Relation, Vulnerability, Love.
Continue reading Call for Papers for Conference “Relation, Vulnerability, Love”