Artist Talk Josefin Arnell - The Tick - Winnares Theodora Niemeijer Prijs 2018

On Saturday March 23 at 15.00 o’clock you can attend an Artist Talk with Josefin Arnell on the occasion of the opening of The Tick, which is currently on show at the Van Abbemuseum.

Arnell created a sculpture of a giant, mutated and monstrous insect for The Eye, the outdoor space of the museum. The Tick is a continuation of Arnell’s series of recent work where she investigates the insect. The insect is a carrier of multiple viruses that can spread to humans, the most notorious being different borrelia viruses, which can cause serious damage to the human nerve system, like Lyme’s disease. Global warming has led to a radical increase in the numbers of ticks. As winters are not cold enough anymore, ticks survive the winter period huddled together and spread in spring and summer time like an epidemic.

In The Tick, Arnell plays with a horror scenario in which blood sucking ticks have taken over the world. They want to infect all humans with viruses. By using the tick as a metaphor of failed aspiration of living together on this planet, the project emphasise on the balance between socio-political relationships between nature, humanity and economics. This horror scenario is reinforced by the insect – it is large, mutated and can be activated by touch. 
 
WINNER THEODORA NIEMEIJER PRIZE 2018
Josefin Arnell is the winner of the 2018 Theodora Niemeijer prize,  an award for emerging female artists living or working in the Netherlands. The prize is awarded once every two years to an artist who submits the best project proposal for The Eye, an oval shaped patio in the Van Abbemuseum. The Theodora Niemeijer prize is the only Dutch prize for visual arts specifically dedicated to female artists. The prize was introduced in 2012 by Stichting Niemeijer Fonds and the Van Abbemuseum, because female artists are still in the minority in exhibitions and museum collections.