In 2020 due to the Corona restrictions six artists have founded ZAC (Zest Artist Collective). We have weekly online meetings, where we explore different creative ideas and projects.

The artists are: Karin van der Molen (Netherlands), Karen Macher (Peru/Italy), Lucia Loren (Spain), Elena Redaelli (Italy/Norway), Sally Kidall (Australia/UK) and Imke Rust (Germany/Namibia).

2021 Projects

Six environmental artists from all around the world created a tribal and ritual circle, recreating the painting “The Dance”, by Henri Matisse. By doing so, the artists recognize their relationship with nature and immerse themselves in the rhythms and the vibrations of their environment. The lesson of this is that we all belong to nature, and it has the intrinsic power of renewing and regenerating.  We take profit from it, but we must not take it all without giving something in exchange.

For this piece, the artists took part in a symbolic dance with nature, supporting the need to highlight the role of humans in the net of life.

This international artist collaboration was set up during the confinement due to the Covid pandemic. Unable to travel and get together, they met online every week. Even today, they still have intense exchanges. Meeting online, they research and do brainstorming about new concepts regarding their current existence and their effects on their own countries’ ecology.

The artists bring us the result of sharing a professional artistic practice that is nomadic, sensitive to places, and created communally, despite the distance.

Some details:

2020 Projects

A video documentation about ZAC by Karin van der Molen:

Cross Pollination

Six artists from 4 different continents bring their ideas together in this installation. The six women know each other from their international nomadic artist’s existence, which suddenly came to a halt due to the corona pandemic. Encounters and exchanges are an important source for transcending a low tide situation. The idea for a ‘message in a bottle’ project originated from an intensive exchange via digital channels. They sent seeds, plants, soil, bones and ashes from Namibia, Australia, Peru, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands, to represent a small collection of our worldwide ecological DNA. Long ago, the continents of the six women were originally linked  together and our soil, plants and ancestors share a similar yet very different DNA. Our continents remain connected by the oceans and the air, which share the global consequences of our existence. Cross-pollination is necessary to keep it liveable.

About my contribution:

Based on the idea of communicating through messages in a bottle, I am offering messages about the essence of life. They are preserved and sealed in isolation of the bottle and can travel safely through the oceans of the world. Together with the bottles of my fellow artists they form a database of knowledge, beauty and a symbolic starter-pack for a new future. 
 
I am interested in the connection between the physical and non-physical world. In my art I explore the relationships between myth and reality, in order to create meaning. 
​Therefore, my messages take the form of physical, mythical and soul essences. Three types of Namibian seeds (representing ancestors and beginnings, beauty & pain and nourishment); fertile ground from my home country Namibia, and soil from my current home in Germany; my hair, as an essence of myself; huge white thorns of the Camelthorn tree, as an essence of protection and a decayed leaf as a thought about death.

Please click on the image to read more about the contents of the bottles.