re:de:construct #4
Between Us by Anno Dijkstra
The work ‘Between Us’ by Anno Dijkstra was in 2021 developed for the Beeldengalerij in Haarlem, and recently moved to MOBi Square Garden. The work evokes associations with surveillance cameras, but instead of cameras, hands, based on casts of children’s hands, are attached to the high pole. With the ‘binocular hands’ younger generations can keep an eye on how we leave the earth for them.
Anno about Between Us:
Now that the sculpture is finished, my previous intention seems to be counted by new associations, now I see the following. The hands, which are small and fragile, are held by a large industrial construction. The hands don’t seem to have much control over their situation; they are at the mercy of a greater power. Or maybe it’s the reverse, because of the clarity and decisiveness of the gesture, that the hands actually are in charge of the larger structure after all. They tell it how to hold them. This contradiction fascinates me, and perhaps expresses the struggle we as humans wage with our own technological inventions: who is in charge.”
Photo: Jan Tengbergen 2023