For the group exhibition called ‘Art Park: Finding Natural Beauty in North‘ at Treehouse NDSM, I made the installation ‘Niet maaien maar zaaien’.

The Art Park exhibition aims to reflect on the meaning of the presence (or absence) of nature in the city. Why is it important to include and preserve green spaces in the city? How is coexistence with and protection of other species essential to human life and survival? What can we learn from nature?

At Treehouse I present my work ‘Don’t mow, sow‘, which provides insight into the connections between plants and insects. When my son Manukai and I took part in a project to count moths in Noord, we were introduced to the Obsidentify app. Since then we have started discovering all kinds of plants in our environment. When the plants we identified were mowed away, I started investigating which insects actually depend on those plants. There turned out to be a lot!

Small drawings of the insects match the drawing of the plant with a map of interaction. It is an ongoing project and it was fantastic to see how many people contributed to the artwork by drawing one of the insects and become part of the growing group of artists taking part in the project. If you are interested in having the opportunity to do this at home, please contact me, I have 2 art boxes available.