In Conversation: Willem de Rooij
In 2002, Dutch-born, Berlin-based artist Willem de Rooij began a series of projects in which he collaborates with florists to realize floral sculptures. Some of de Rooij’s Bouquets have been visually elaborate, incorporating numerous species of flowers and plants; others have been highly regimented, for instance juxtaposing bunches of black and white tulips — two varieties whose seasons only overlap for a short time in February.
His latest in the series, Bouquet XI (2014), is the subject of Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Willem de Rooij, part of the exhibition series taking place in the Museum’s Skirball Lobby. On view through April 19, 2015, the installation resulted from a collaboration between de Rooij and Bella Meyer, founder and creative director of the New York-based floral studio FleursBELLA. Bouquet XI is made of flowers and plants that originate from Israel and its neighbors, and that have strong allergenic qualities.
The Jewish Museum: I’m curious about your work beyond this project. What other ongoing series are you working on?
Willem de Rooij: For the last six years I’ve been making hand woven tapestries. As many of my projects, this is a collaboration. The weaver, Ulla Schünemann, is based in Potsdam in former Eastern Germany. She has been weaving by hand for 30 years, and some of her looms are over 300 years old. She is extremely skillful and knowledgeable — there was a strong tradition in hand weaving in East Germany, when the [Berlin] Wall was still up.
The tapestries we produce are rather abstract. They are elaborations on color and on material. There are different parameters that I work with and different instructions that I give to the weaver. As with the flower works, her input is of great importance, because weaving is a profession in itself, a very particular and specialized skill.
JM: Making floral arrangements or making textiles through hand weaving — it sounds like you have an interest in these artisan or craft practices, and in presenting them in a fine-art context. Would you say that there is something that connects them?
WdR: A recurring and overarching interest of mine is different forms of cultural exchange, either historical or contemporary. The colonial project, or the complex of colonial projects, and their present-day incarnations and consequences are important aspects of this thematic strand in my work. Those interests can have political connotations. It can also be purely about form — but intercultural exchange, cultural clashes, and, let’s say, cross-cultural misunderstandings are inspiring and productive to me.
JM: Even the misunderstandings?
WdR: Especially the misunderstandings, yeah.
JM: Can you give an example?
WdR: Misreadings and miscontextualizations can sometimes be very painful for the different parties involved. The process of becoming exotic, when people, objects, or concepts move from one cultural sphere into another, getting misunderstood, getting lost. I think misunderstandings of all sorts are, for artists, very important… I think artists do well with confusion. Artists are there to produce problems, not to solve them — that’s my understanding of being an artist.
JM: Specific to Bouquet XI, how do you see that being realized? Tell me about the problems and confusions. The flowers selected for Bouquet XI, for instance, possess allergenic properties.
WdR: Right, this work has the possibility of influencing the viewer on a physical level. Now, persons with allergies are at risk simply by being alive; going out on the street can cause allergenic symptoms, I know this because I’m sensitive to pollen myself. It was really exciting for me to test this aspect of material. We’re not supposed to touch art pieces. And because I’ve worked with sometimes very costly existing objects and artworks, I know very well what the reasons are for that. The idea of an art piece that one is not allowed to touch — but that in return might be able to touch you on a physical level — I thought that that would be very exciting.
Plant allergy is a beautiful thing because it makes you aware of the natural world around you. It’s a lot easier to protect yourself from a rain shower than from pollen that drifts around in the air. So it’s quite an intrusive natural phenomenon that really grabs you by the nose and by the eyes.
JM: To get back to what you were saying earlier about cultural clashes and trans-cultural migration, there is some element of the piece that’s tied into the way that pollen travels the room. It could be taken as a metaphor.
WdR: Yes, pollen transgresses borders and comes in when you open the window. The Middle East obviously is a region of great cultural richness and diversity, as well as of confusion and conflict. This complexity would obviously be impossible to grasp in one work, but Bouquet XI reflects on certain aspects of it.
