Review Rachaël:

“Your exhibition invited me to reflect on my own grief in a different way—not just experiencing it, but also expressing it. It made me more conscious of how much grief surrounds us, even though we see so little of it. It’s strange how we mostly keep it to ourselves. This project beautifully created an opening to bring it out and find connection with others.“

“Rouw is voor mij…” translates to “Grief is for me…”. I explore this question in a series of poems and pastel drawings I exhibited at “De Rode Schuur” in Noordwijk, The Netherlands (2022). Recognizing that grief is not only personal, I stamped the phrase “Grief is for me” on pieces of paper, inviting visitors to complete the sentence. To my surprise, there was a profound need for this space to express grief, and the papers quickly were filled with words of grief. This experience made it clear to me how essential it is to create space for grief and for grieving people; to bring this often hidden but deeply intricate part of life, (death and grief), into the light rather than leaving it invisible.