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Marika Vandekraats

video, sculptuur, schrijven, Ecologie, Dekolonisatie, Audiovisueel, Artistiek onderzoek

Marika Vandekraats (she/her) is an artist from the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver, Canada. Her research focuses on the human entanglements tied between nature and capital to frame extractivist processes that have irreversibly affected the climate. Her work takes shape through video, sculpture, text, and performative installations that utilize archival research to challenge its context. Currently, this process takes shape through a collaborative publication about the strawberry, bringing attention to its colonial history and its exploitative present. Vandekraats regularly collaborates with friends in performance, video, and workshops to form solidarity and collective resistance against structures of oppression with the exaltation of friendship.

Fly-Tying in Trying Times (2025)
Fly-Tying in Trying Times (2025) - The art of fly-fishing involves crafting artificial bugs by attaching various materials to a hook to attract fish. These materials, which can be synthetic or sourced from animals like birds, rabbits, deer, and bears, are combined in specific patterns. These crafted hooks, called “flies” (or singularly: “a fly”) are a kind of multi-media sculpture through their use of collage. When submerged, they glimmer and move naturally, mimicking bugs that catch a fish’s attention. This art of multispecies communication becomes an act of hybridity— combining fragments of other species to mimic another (feathers and furs tied to resemble a fly). While investigating this craft, Fly-tying in Trying Times explores the role of fishing in its many contexts - encompassing the emptying and overheating of our oceans (thus affecting the many ecologies existing in bodies of water), the increasing pollution through plastics (plastics that litter our shores and often end up on our plates as microplastics within the fish we eat), and the people affected most. Further, the hooks are made by combining many elements from the natural world. The research also considers the origins of these materials and aims to make hooks that are derived from the regions I inhabit on this research, namely Nida (LT) and Rotterdam. When emabrking on this research, I was on residency at Nida Art Colony, in Lithuania. Nida was a long-time fishing village, therefore this research was supplemented by exploring the role of fishing within a community. This project granted me time to research these many intersections active within the world of fishing while communicating through the role of craft. By bringing this small-scale way of working into the conversation of the ethics and politics around fishing, the work encouraged a slowing down in our relationship to the aquatic world.
How to See Through the Eyes of a Fish
How to See Through the Eyes of a Fish (2024) - The work took the form of a performative workshop in which participants collectively crafted fishing hooks. Drawing from my ongoing research How to See Through the Eyes of a Fish, the session introduced the art of fly tying—a technique in which hooks are adorned with animal furs, feathers, and synthetic fragments to imitate the movements of insects and lure fish. This act of multispecies mimicry revealed how fragments of one species could be assembled to resemble another, creating hybrid forms of communication between humans and fish. Presented within the program A system is not the sum of its parts at Art Central Rotterdam, the workshop unfolded as both research and performance. Together with participants, I speculated on what might attract the attention of a fish in bodies of water familiar to the participants. The work drew attention to the unseen biodiversity beneath watery surfaces and invited participants to consider how urban life is entangled with aquatic ecologies.
The Colonial, Familiar, Nostalgic, Radical, Transformative Life of the Strawberry (2024)
The Colonial, Familiar, Nostalgic, Radical, Transformative Life of the Strawberry (2024) - The story of the strawberry is troubled. Troubled because of what becomes uncovered as we unpick the systems within which this sweet, nostalgic fruit is embedded within. From rural English fruit-picking sites, to agricultural fields in Spain, to the sides of North American highways, the strawberry exists in many formations. Its multiple (his)stories — starting from its hybrid colonial roots, trace the many hands that have encountered this fruit on its journey into our mouths, its avid consumer. The Colonial, Familiar, Nostalgic, Radical, Transformative Life of the Strawberry encompasses the stories and histories that shape the human relations that are entangled with the strawberry. It unpacks the abstractions between the fruit and the exploitation often overlooked within its production, to explore how, through varied social, political, geographic and economic contexts, the story of the strawberry lives on through all of our hands, mouths, and memories. The book was published with Hum Drum Press (Rotterdam/Berlin) and includes a text contribution from Patricia Diz Neira and an interview with Shreya Shankar. Many thanks to all the people who helped to make this publication-- through support of all kinds and sharing many strawberries stories. Thank you. This publication was generously supported by CBK Rotterdam.
Another Harvest (2023) - In July 2023, Growing Space Wielewall hosted me in a presentation of my strawberry research. Starting from the strawberry’s colonial roots, I am working on a publication (to be published with HumDrum Press in 2024) that will encompass stories and histories that shape the human relations entangled with the strawberry. What we know today as the common strawberry is a hybrid from two strawberries planted in a garden in Brittany in the 1750s. Side-by-side, its parent fruits were souvenirs stolen by colonists who wanted to bring the taste of the new world back to the old. My research begins at this place and traces the lines stemming from their over production and globalisation that continues to ravage ecosystems and exploit people globally. By observing a repetitive obsession with the strawberry, I work to unpack the abstractions between the fruit and the exploitation often overlooked within its production. The exhibition hosted open hours in which visitors are encouraged to share their own strawberry stories, be it memories of nature, recipes, or other agricultural anxieties. This exhibition was a moment to share gathered research for an upcoming publication to be realized in 2024. This project is supported by CBK Rotterdam
(Un)turned (2022) - (Un)turned is a performative reflection of the essentiality of gas within the personal and nation context. The performance includes footage placed in reverse of the first pipeline being installed in British Columbia, ultimately imagine the pipeline being torn back up from the earth. The text performed the question “what are our essential relationships to extraction?” Considering the entanglements caused by globalization, the performance utilizes the role of the surveyor, moving a cart around the space. Channeling through delay and looping pedals, a microphone is dragged on the ground and echoes the moments of contact, refraining to a moment of the text: "The turning of the soils is a line, east to west, north to south. The turning of the soils is a line that crossed lines. The turning of the soils is a line too far."
Blue Waters (2022) - In collaboration with Gloriya Avgust. Blue Waters is a performance built around two characters: a tropical storm and a sunburned tourist. Our script, performed live and broadcasted as a radio program, followed the two characters until their moment of meeting, an interruption of great disaster. Throughout the script, we returned to a song from Sally Oldfeild titled “Blue Waters” which sings about a love that takes over like a river crashing into her. This form of interruption was a returning point in our research as a question “What interruptions do we invite into our lives and which interruptions violently uproot us?” We placed the moment of bliss and introspection while on vacation in juxtaposition with the effects of a tropical storm to consider the roles that tourist capitalism plays in climate change and how larger looming catastrophes can be made parallel to our own internal dilemmas.
November Strawberry (2021) - November Strawberry questions the consequences of producing fruit monocultures which make produce available year round. In Florida, strawberries are one of the leading causes for sinkholes, due to overwatering in winter months causing soil erosion. This fact prompted the question: “what is the normal that we are trying to preserve?” This question was explored through 3D scanning and mold-making, two other forms of replication. In both processes, cracks eventually emerge: the glitch in 3D scanning; the seams of a cast object. In creating our own forms of multiples in casting and scanning, we were reinterpreting the forms of replication made at strawberry farms, allowing the interruptions in form to be our own sinkholes, pushing us towards our question: “How does replicating the causes of cracks help us to preserve a future?”
Birling Down White Waters (2021) - Birling Down White Waters traces the early history of Canadian logging as a means to consider the formation of Canadian identity. Log rolling, or birling, was a skill that was brought over from Scandinavian settlers in Canada in which men would balance on logs to poke at any jams being formed by logs pilling up in river bends. This act of balancing on logs became equated to being a good dancer, as you must be agile on your feet to stay afloat, and the log rollers became idyllic figures within the Canadian settler narrative, having even a song made for them which tells of a woman in love with a log roller for his dancing skills. How does a settler nation frame its history? What and who is excluded in this narrative? By collaging archived footage and positioning myself in the position of the log roller floating on the river, I question the romanticization placed on a figure that was created through industry and colonial methods of deforestation.
Smoke Machine (2020) - Collaboration with Kotryna Buruckaite. A reflection between friends on the mundanity and the infinite feeling of trying, and the search for a collective release with the non-humans in our lives.
Washing Hands with Soap in the Shape of my Mother's Hands (2018-2019) - In 5 seperate performances, I situated myself in public space to wash passerbys’ hands with soap that I had casted in the shape of my mother’s hands. As the performances continued, time would gradually appear on the surface of the soap as the lines of the hand would dissolve and soap would beging to lose its hand-shaped form. The performance was made in the aftermath of a hand operation my mother underwent which made me question changes in the feelings of care and if these changes could be shared with strangers.

Nida Art Colony Residency

Datum:
Locatie: Nida Art Colony
In samenwerking met: Nida Art Colony

During her residency at NAC, I tied fishing flies using waste materials found along the shores of the Baltic Sea in order to speculatively think about the role of craft in an ecologically shifting future. Each fly reflected a hybrid artefact – part tool, part art object, part record of humankind’s impact on the marine environment.

https://nidacolony.lt/marika-vandekraats-open-studio/

How to See Through the Eyes of a Fish

Datum:
Locatie: VARIA
In samenwerking met: Art Central Rotterdam

How to see through the eyes of a Fish is a introductory session to the craft of fly-tying. During the session, we discussed the ecological systems existing in bodies of water and consider how things look deep deep down. By speculating on light, colour, movement and temperature, we crafted speculative hooks for underwater beings.

Another Harvest

Datum:
Locatie: Growing Space Wielewaal

July 21 - 29, 2024, Growing Space Wielewaal hosted Marika Vandekraats in a presentation of her strawberry research. Starting from the strawberry's colonial roots, Marika is working on a publication that will encompass stories and histories that shape the human relations entangled with the strawberry. The exhibition will host open hours in which visitors are encouraged to share their own strawberry stories, be it memories of nature, recipes, or other agricultural anxieties.

Tent Online Cinema #2

Datum:
Locatie: online
In samenwerking met: TENT

TENT Online Cinema #2 showcases recent video works from Rotterdam based artists. The video work I will be presenting is "Birling Down White Waters", a part of an ongoing research project which investigates the early history of logging in Canada as a means to consider the formation of a Canadian identity through industry.

https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/series/online-cinema/
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