Info
I WAS HERE invites you to be not only a spectator, but a participant in a poetic journey that interweaves past, present and future of our changing landscape. This multidisciplinary installation combines sculpture, text, sound and rituals performed by the audience, which consists of both adults and children.
I WAS HERE is a monument to the landscape. The starting point of this installation is the painting Das Eismeer (1823–1824) by artist Caspar David Friedrich, which Van Weenen deconstructs in her own unique way. The work includes nine capes — seven for adults and two for children — that symbolize the ice in the painting. With these capes, inspired by travel garments from the same period, you take on an active role in the artwork. By using themes such as travel, activism, and time, she explores the connections between geological time, Romanticism, the era in which the painting was created, the present, and the future.
The installation is arranged like a compass, and accompanied by a reinterpretation of the whalers’ song Rolling Down to Old Mohee from 1858, the public is invited to become part of the artwork. Concepts such as Weltschmerz reflect the melancholic sense of alienation from nature, which the artist links to contemporary terms like Anthropocene horror, solastalgia, and ecological grief.
The interplay of an ice-blue cape, the song, and the installation offers visitors an intimate, meditative experience in which they become part of the artwork—both physically and visually.
Visual arts can be visited daily from Saturday 14 June between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM.
Accessibility info
The access route from the bicycle parking area is 200 meters of steep paved path and 300 meters of loose sand beach. No seating is available.