We are proud to bring to your attention the exhibition of Ina Van Zyl, former artist in residence at the Thami Mnyele Foundation, at the Geemente Museum in Den Haag.

Ina Van Zyl
"Shameful pieces"
28 August 2010 - 21 November 2010
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag
Stadhouderslaan 41
2517 HV Den Haag

Ina Van Zyl
"Shameful pieces"
A still life, evocative, perhaps even erotic – that’s your first thought when you see a painting by Ina van Zyl (b. 1971). Look closer and her work creates mixed feelings of desire, loneliness and embarrassment. Ina van Zyl’s exhibition in the Projects Gallery of the Gemeentemuseum takes the form of an installation entitled Shameful Pieces. The paintings in it show realistic close-ups of genitals, both male and female, and occasionally images of other objects, such as a luxuriant red flower, a dark-coloured fruit or a walnut. They are in no way shocking. They are details of the world we live in blown up into images that are sometimes almost abstract. The artist’s subtle, playful handling of paint makes her work seem introverted, although anger and aggression are never far away.

more info:www.gemeentemuseum.nl/


Ina van Zyl was born and brought up in South Africa, where she studied art at Stellenbosch University. She initially drew comic strips for the taboo-breaking satirical underground magazine Bitterkomix. It was only after she moved to Amsterdam, where she studied at De Ateliers, that she began to paint and to work as an autonomous artist.

The heat of South Africa pervades the subjects of her earlier work: varnished toenails in sandals, sweet fruit like apples and plums. These days, the emphasis is more on the deep, dark, intense colours of South African nature, as found in the broad, empty landscapes of the Karoo. At first glance, expectations of political engagement seem to be mistaken. There is no direct reference to the rainbow nation of the new South Africa or to the previous apartheid era, the tumultuous period of her youth. Even so, this is what she addresses, although she does so via the mechanisms underlying the political legacy of her country, rather than through its immediately apparent political reality: hidden forces like power, oppression and humiliation are her chosen territory.

In Shameful Pieces, Van Zyl explores these mechanisms in her own, highly distinctive way. But her work invariably operates on a number of different levels. Shameful Pieces is not only about power and sexual violence; it is also about the humiliations that people impose on themselves, for example by following fashions in the removal of body hair. The works in this series are strongly interrelated but, at the same time, each is a world in itself.

The sexual connotations of close-ups of genitals are obvious but Van Zyl manages to evoke the same feelings through her images of fruit. She also plays the game in the opposite direction. For example, a vagina may be viewed from such an angle that it looks like a landscape, or be presented in so stylised a manner that it almost resembles an abstract composition. This ambiguity is reflected in the effect of the paintings on the viewer, both attracting the eye and inspiring feelings of embarrassment and repulsion.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication containing an essay by Ernst van Alphen (price: € 15).