SPOTTED: Metropolis M on Alfrédo Doornkamp – capturing hidden histories through art
- Fine Art
- Design
- Education in Art
Every year, the magazine Metropolis M releases a Graduation Special, featuring work from various alumni who graduated as visual artists. Alfrédo Doornkamp graduated from Fine Art and Design in Education (part-time) in Zwolle, and is one of the alumni featured in the special. Metropolis M asked Alfrédo: "What is the story behind your work?”
Alfrédo Doornkamp already has several lives behind him. He was born in Surinam in 1980, and lived twelve years in Aruba, where his neighbour, Elvis Tromp, saw talent in him. Tromp, it turned out, was a famous artist, and he asked Doornkamp to try out painting alongside drawing. After Doornkamp agreed, that same year he was asked to make a realistic work for the governor of Aruba. Entirely self-taught, Doornkamp started giving painting lessons in a lock-up garage. When he moved to the Netherlands in late 2016, he started a teacher training course in order to be able to teach other subjects too. ‘I'm constantly working on what I can pass on to others’, he explains, ‘to my pupils, to my children, to the world.’
His graduation is a sextych consisting of unevenly sawn pieces of wood distributed over a wall. The wood is painted with black-and-white images of an autumnal forest that recalls an infrared photo. Through the puddles and over the dead leaves walks a little girl, painted in colour, with a purple bow in her hair. ‘I was once walking through a forest with my family, when that inner monologue started up again’, relates Doornkamp. ‘I try not to get too caught up in my thoughts, but the realisation was thundering in my head that we are the descendants of enslaved people, and that our surname was given us by plantation owners. I looked at the trees and realised that the roots have withstood fires and droughts, which you cannot tell from the blossoming crowns. The same is true of people. I tried to capture that contradiction pictorially.’
On the fourth panel, the girl suddenly disappears. In her place, a luxuriant purple flower blooms. ‘In those days, a lot of Dutch people were against colonialism, because it did not accord with Christianity. So a sneaky way around was devised: dark skinned people were no longer recognised as people. With this personal work, I'm trying to say something political.’
Author: Annabel Essink, writer and art historian