Blossom
2006
video installation
video on DVD
2 screens
7:00, sound
Videos
2011 © rinihurkmans
Photographs of dead Iranian young men (martyrs from the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war) – shown in a small glass case, a symbolic bridal room – are juxtaposed with footage from animated markets of Iran. In these memorial cases, relatives have placed memorabilia and flowers as well as transparent curtains.
The market's merchants are always men. The women who shop are most of the time entirely dressed in black. The colorful textiles in the market are symbols of a hidden life. They are like flowers, referring to the pain of missing and loss, but also to the joy of their beauty. From among the noises of the market, there slowly rises the reverberation of a procession passing through.
The critic Janneke Wesseling writes about Blossom “Hurkmans strives to express the unspeakable. Of all that cannot be expressed in words or be comprehended, this is most true of death. Hurkmans’ art works represent loss, emptiness, the absence of a loved one...
In Blossom Hurkmans creates a fascinating reversal of things. The living talk, gesticulate and negotiate, but we never actually get to see them. The dead ones however we do see, they even look straight at us. Death is present, while life is absent”