Wapke Feenstra

The Best Place, 2007
Wapke Feenstra (NL, 1959) lives and works in Rotterdam. Feenstra, raised on a farm in Friesland, reveals new lectures on the cultural expressions of the countryside. By means of a direct dialogue with the active residents of the landscape she situates her artistic project in a rural setting. Her project fits within a European framework and the ongoing debates about cultural heritage.

The contact with the workers and users of the landscape is for Wapke Feenstra essential. She organizes meetings where everyone is allowed to speak. In this way, she brings back to live the experience of the environment and are new interpretations of the landscape being dreated. It reveals new lectures on the cultural expressions of the countryside. By means of a direct dialogue with the active residents of the landscape she situates her artistic project in a rural setting. Her project fits within a European framework and the ongoing debates about cultural heritage.

An example of one such project is The Best Place where the relationship between the use of the and local culture is displayed and questioned by a call, a trip and a travel book. The project takes place in the Dutch Hardenberg, a bog area with some sand ridges along the river Vecht. It is a farming region with national camping tourism. The question arises: why people settle down and iron in this particular spot? Historically, the peat extraction, later the onset of some farms and farm tourism on poor sandy soil are to blame. But in 2007 inhabitants commit themselves to the native place and ritualizes its culture.

After receiving her postgraduate degree at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, she co-initiated the platform for NEsTWORK at the occasion of Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam. She was invited for a residency at Grizedale Arts in Northern England, together with Kathrin Böhm and Antje Schiffers, co-founders of the art association myvillages.org. Since then they have been working together in the International Village Shop, a rural network that takes-on the issues of land, production and value.
For more information: www.myvillages.org