Magic Tragic

Inge van Heerde continuously strives to create images which confront the viewer with situations that border Normality. Her images convey an ominous vibe. Expect the unexpected. She wonders about what’s normal, she wonders about what’s abnormal. In her work, van Heerde searches for that interaction between Normality and Abnormality. “I’m inspired by people around me, all looking at things in different ways. Though we’re looking at the same thing, we all see and form our own truths. I think it’s interesting how we look at the world and the things surrounding us.” “I’m inspired and triggered by madness and “insanity”. I always ask myself: is this actually crazy, is this truly insane? Who determines? Maybe the ones who are labeled as being crazy or social outcasts, are in reality the geniuses of this world.” “As you can read I’m always searching for things what the society describes as normal and abnormal. For this I’m looking at all kinds of people but also especially people society describes as crazy, confused or mentally ill. What I see in the Dutch media is that nowadays there is more clarity about this subject but also more fear again. A lot of times the media speaks about ‘confused’ people very easily but I think that’s really a shame. ” As Mister Frank van Hoof Senior researcher Trimbos-instituut is saying in an article: "Confusion" is not a characteristic of a person but a judgment about a person's behavior and thoughts. When they call someone ‘ confused’ they actually say that they can not find any logic in one’s behavior, words or thoughts. The consistency eludes them, they can not put things in context and they can not understand it rationale. It doesn’t mean that logic, consistency and motives are not there. All kind of motives , feelings, idea’s, observations, emotions that we might not know, can make some one do what he does or say what he says. Even if someone is psychotic, and we can no longer follow the data, it often appears that in the context of his life history you can actually observe an underlying logic and meaningful connection in what anyone says, does, sees and hears. And where there is despair, panic and anger, it is often because of the fact that the persons concernings establishes that he is not understood; Either because our opinion on his condition is: 'confused'. “ To easily we put the stamp on somebody that he or she is ‘ confused’ or ‘ crazy’ because most of the times it also says: ‘ I don't understand you and i'm also not going to put effort in trying.’ What is really a shame and makes the world harder and less beautiful again.