Thomas Meijerman

artistiek onderzoek - conceptueel - documentair - ecologie - fotografie - geluid - installatie - land art - natuur - omgeving - residency - video

In order to find out about my essence as a human being and creator in this world, I am searching for the perfect form of creation. For as far as I can remember I have been interested in these questions and the things that I spend my time on are probably partly initiated from there. This spend time is mostly getting defeated by the landscape, learning about other beings and searching for things that leave a mark.

For my work I gather different factors and creatures and bring them together to realize how they react to one another. This often results in a new story and a new world for me to discover and to build on.

Another part of my work and research consists of the collection of things of beauty that give me a feeling of essence and that answer some of my questions about existence. These are often objects or situations with defined structures and an ungraspable dynamic.

The work I make, often functions as a bridge between my obsession or ideas about beauty, my thoughts and the audience. It exposes the structures, depth, detail and


Human Nature - Can nature still be sublime in an Anthropocene world? I’ve always believed that we’re tiny compared to nature and that nature is much stronger than us. When getting lost in the woods of England or being dragged under a stone in my kayak, I experienced these natural forces in a down scaled way. This power is familiar to all of us via either news media or from our own experience. I wanted to show the beauty of these powers. Along the way tough I found out that most forests are manmade and we’re trying to control nature’s forces. We’re building dams to protect ourselves from water and shooting arrows in the sky to stop the rain from falling. More and more people believe we’ve entered the Anthropocene and we’re banned to control and rival nature. This feeling of being no more than a powerless species in a world we think to own sort of comforted me. Hearing about the Anthropocene made me worry about the nature still being as sublime as the romantic vision in my head. Something that comforted me was the fact that of course we are nature and the more we change it, it will change us. To try and find out about our relationship with nature, I made some nature myself and used human forces as a force of nature to try and make it sublime to me. Can nature still be sublime to all of us in the Anthropocene and are we part of it?
Island Discovery - It is becoming harder and harder to find a place in the world that isn’t already discovered by humans. It became impossible to find a piece of land without obvious traces of human kind. This leaves me with an empty feeling, it makes things more boring in a way and flat. I believe that it is important not to understand everything in the world and leave some mystery, it gives depth. Growing up in The Netherlands meant that I grew up in a country where every piece of land is designed by mankind and big parts of land are even drilled up from the sea. In this project I went out and took photos of untouched fragments of landscapes. Hereby I claimed these places to be part of my imaginary island. There are also parts where I made temporary land art in order to really make the land my own. Now I have a constantly growing and developing island that only I can discover further and only I can show. Everyone with imagination can visit but not one can leave a trace.
Positioning in the Chain of Creation - As an artist, I’ve always admired and appreciated the formation process of a landscape. The dynamics of the landscape are strongly affected by the organisms that inhabit it and the elements that shape it. The structures of a landscape are created through a multitude of factors. In my opinion, this dynamic is the main reason why a landscape is an embodiment of a perfect creation. As an artist, I am striving to create something as sublime as a landscape. In this project, I research my position in relation to the landscape and try to figure out what I can contribute. How does my ability to create, compare to the abilities of nature? What kind of positive influence and value can I provide as a human being? To exercise this influence and to create the essential dynamic, I needed to use the same organisms and elements that one finds in nature. Through experiments with capturing landscapes through photography and drawing, I have gained a better understanding of the specifics of the factors necessary to create a landscape. Based on these findings I started to create my own landscapes. To construct, I was required to work together with nature. Within these landscapes, I have mainly experimented with the power of plants, animals, water, and human beings. Working with nature in this sense has made me question my position in the chain of creation. Only through partnership with nature itself, would I be able to achieve to gain a higher position within this chain. As I shaped my self-made landscapes, the landscapes also shaped my vision. My perception evolved similarly to the evolution process of existing landscapes. One thing I’ve learned is to see the beauty, importance and influence of small beings instead of only bigger factors and gave them refuge in my own landscape. The landscape I created is a symbiosis of natural and cultural elements that are carefully selected and combined.