KENT CHAN

HOT HOUSE PROJECTS - LIKEN LICHEN

(Exhibition, 2020)

liken lichen was an exhibition by Marjet Zwaans at the Hot House, curated by Kent Chan.

A mirrored foil spotting lichen prints
carpets the ground over which
more lichen-marked used silkscreens hang.
Their images grow into one another.
The lichen, a symbiont thrives off
and nurtures its situated community.
One with a biological many,
is preferred, some would say
over yet another
mechanical penny.

Marjet Zwaans seeks proximity with the material and people she works with. Looking attentively at lichen, signifiers of healthy environments. The lichen that grows on tree bark is less a single organism than a symbiosis of multiple algae and fungi. It alludes to the social community at Jan van Eyck Academie and the way its participants, their ideas, and the institute mutually nourish one another through intimacy and trust. This interdependency and responsivity reflect among all Zwaans’s artworks, which develop and merge with and through one another.