About me
“Music, poetry, dance, visual arts, etc., they all originate in the collision of the soul with an aspect of the reality for which reason has no terms and language has no words.”
On the edges of our society, the places, the situations where the human control of its vicinity is relinquished different processes have a chance to develop. This is a setting in which an object develops and transforms. The present vegetation grows and new life is created. But the object itself develops, too. “Everything assembled fades and perishes. Man also.”
Us humans too create, build, develop, et cetera, but we don’t realize the transience of it all. Everything we create or assemble undergoes a phase of construction and drawback.
In the phase of the drawback we are able to see how creations become looser over time until they have detached themselves of every form of human control.
To me it is as if they have freed themselves of it.
In a short or long process they return to the life they arose from and become hummus, dust or energy from which something new can be created.
My name is Egbert Jonkers, born in 1990 in the Netherlands. I am actively working as a conceptual artist for over ten years. I graduated as a bachelor from academie Minerva in Groningen (Netherlands) and finished the masterprogramme Arts in Fine Arts at the MaHKU in Utrecht (Netherlands).
The story I offer is a modern and conceptual photographical realization of the classical Vanitas and the breaking of the illusion of immortality. An illusion humanity nourishes so as not to face their own mortality. My work uses ancient themes and portrays the essence instead of the symbolic stories of the classical Vanitas. This can be seen in constructions of stone and glass and buildings that are slowly reclaimed by nature. But it can also be seen in the achievement- and presentation oriented
society in which we live. A place where the emphasis is on being young and immortal and disguising ageing and less prosperous populations.
In the realization that everything is perishable, there is always a process ongoing. Even when it is not visible or hard to measure.
Because this process isn’t influenced or controlled (anymore) and left in the capable hands of nature (weather, growth of vegetation, erudition, et cetera) I believe that it becomes clear that there is no core. The process is ever changing like a wave in the ocean.
Just like my subject is in an ongoing process, my audience might choose to become aware of this process in themselves. By being aware they can choose whether to ignore it, reject it or allow this
natural process into their lives.