Ik bin.

I gave my project the name "Ik bin", which is the slang in the village where I grew up, in the east of Holland. It means "I am". It's about my "finding" and "describing" my youth memories in monuments of nature and personal feelings. It has been a journey of approx. 2 years. It's almost impossible to describe the intensity of the process. It sure has been a rollercoaster of mixed emotions, in which I allowed my deeper self not only to feel, but also to react on those early memories. It's in fact the story of a boy who grows up in a small narrow-minded village. With a strict religious upbringing by a second mother, who had no children of her own and who came in his life at the age of 6. The boy can hardly remember his deceased, biological mother. The much older brothers and sisters (in law) all the more. Like the middle-aged father, their inability to deal with this sadness often leads to a frustration in which the boy is thrown around as their plaything of abuse of power and harassments. It's about inner family relations, the loneliness, the urge of hiding, but also about the boy’s loving and laughing. This is his view of the world as he knows it. Concept description Landscape monuments that stimulate all my senses, that bring me back to my youth and the smell of dried grass. shelters, mysteries and daydreaming, where loneliness was literal and freedom a desire. The youngest of a big family, half orphan, growing up in a conservatively religious, hypocritical, depressing climate. Because of this project I could retrieve my Self, realizing that I have lived it through and done it all, that I have won a lot and lost the same, did forgive but not forget. That I needed to be in the centre and had to be lonely as hell. I am redeemed and I am happy.