Sandra de Groot’s works at the Children’s Biennale at the Groninger Museum
Translation by Marina Dlacic
From 1 June, the Groninger Museum exhibits the works of four outstanding international artists and nine Dutch artists chosen after a careful selection for their interactive, colorful works and installations that arouse wonder, participation and creativity.
The Children’s Biennale is in fact a great art exhibition made by children for everyone. Exceptionally, young people are actively involved in every aspect of the organization of the show. They visit artists’ studios, write texts for exhibitions, help plan the advertising campaign, assist in setting up the exhibition, learning how to be a tour guide, and much more. (The public can follow the experiences of the “children’s ambassadors” on kinderbiennalegroningen.nl and on Instagram at #kinderbiennalegm, in Dutch).
The Groninger Museum considers it essential that children and young people can experience art and culture and visit the museum.
Groninger Museum, Kinderbiennale, foto Siese Veenstra
Among the artists participating in the Biennale is Sandra de Groot who enthusiastically joined this project.
As she writes on her blog “… the skills of the trade can only survive if they live in every generation …”. The artist believes that being able to show children how current traditional skills can be is important: she teaches them that creativity, patience, manual skills are means through which they can also make their dreams come true and perhaps encourage them to experiment beyond smartphones, video games and TV.
Her installation – OPUS – made with knots and ropes, concerns precisely the awareness of the value of commitment and time and shows that by working with creativity and patience, concentrated and intuitive, you can create wonderful works.
OPUS is divided into six sculptures, m. 3.20 by 1.25 m in diameter (arms and legs). “I never know – she says – how much rope I used exactly (I can roughly deduce it from the coils used). I work intuitively and spontaneously and I don’t know a priori where a sculpture leads me, where the material and my hands take me. I work when I feel the need without restrictions of time or quantity of material. My work is free, in every sense. ” All the sculptures made for “OPUS” are in high quality cotton rope.
His and other works from the Children’s Biennale will be open until January 2022 at the Groninger Museum, Museumeiland 1, Postbus 90, 9700 ME Groningen, The Netherlands (Info ph. + 31 (0) 50 3666555 – www.groningermuseum.nl ).
