These are the bitter words of Hamlet that are muttered, spat out and sometimes almost begging in the two hundred meter long, cramped and soil-smelling shooting range in the HEM near Zaandam. What a Piece of Work is Man is the latest work by the Dutch artist Patricia Kaersenhout (1966), who took the title from Shakespeare’s famous monologue.
And, just to get straight to the point: what a job this is.
Kaersenhout has long been no stranger to the art world. Years before a term like ‘woke’ even existed, her installations, collages, drawings, photos and (animated) films have pointed us to the blind spot in our national and personal history. Kaersenhout focuses on transatlantic human trafficking, racism, sexism and injustice in general. She does this energetically and with iron discipline. Kaersenhout’s work always contains criticism – she doesn’t call herself an activist for nothing – but that criticism is brought to the fore almost analytically. Look – this is how you did it, this is who you forgot, this is who made you invisible.
The result is encyclopedic yet fairytale-like – as in The Dream of a Thousand Shipwrecks (2009), a paper fleet review about colonial delusions and their terrible consequences. Sometimes her work also comes across as cerebral, such as her installation Guess who is coming to dinner too (2017-2019), featuring Judy Chicago’s famous The Dinner Party from 1979 ‘borrows’ to honor forgotten heroines of color at the table.
Also read: Four museums jointly purchase work by Patricia Kaersenhout
Symbolic place
But her latest work – What a Piece of Work is Man – is undeniably emotional. ‘Heroes’ from our colonial history explode on film in slow motion and then return to their original state in rewind: three glass busts. The busts are of Dutch military commanders, two of whom were horrific in the nineteenth century in Central Java, the Moluccas and other provinces.
Until 2003, the arms factories of the Dutch state were located on the Hemterrein near Zaandam. The remains of this are still there, in varying degrees of decay. The shooting range is the perfect symbolic place for What a Piece of Work is Man. This creature (“How Noble in Reason? (…) In Action, how like an Angel? In apprehension, how like a God”) is unparalleledly clever at destroying its environment with everyone in it. “Man delights me not,” says Hamlet. Here, on the firing range, those men learned to use the most efficient means of destruction.
Also read the interview with Patricia Kaersenhout.
The glass busts (one is missing his head) are at the beginning of the firing range. Nine monitors hang along the sides of the track, portraying the exploding glass as a glittering shower of diamonds. Plants and flowers proliferate on the ceiling – lush and colourful, as if a tropical jungle is growing under the earth. But everything is chilly and cold and above all vulnerable, because everything is made of glass.
At the end of the firing range in the main film, the three busts shatter and then return in reverse order to what they were briefly: revered heroes. Shakespeare’s words, the sound system that echoes in the shooting range, the beautiful music and images – they penetrate your fibres. This installation is angry and beautiful, moving and disturbing. But she owes her greatness to the speck of hope she offers. Hope for a world where shards are glued again and where what has been broken can be reversed.
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