The project happened after traveling along the Barents Sea coast and includes my painting, as well as text and illustrations from Gerrit de Feer’s Barents Swimming, a participant in the last two expeditions of Willem Barents. Dry facts that have come down to us from the diaries of the expeditions and non-verbal emotional painting are a dialogue through time in different languages, derived from contact with this place. Reflections on the feelings of people who first touched and opened it, the space of a place, the memory of a place.

How did the people who opened it feel this space? Can we imagine what they felt then? What do we feel today, still, opening it for ourselves? And can this place be considered open?

2019