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Wapke Feenstra

Economie, Ecologie, DIY, Dekolonisatie, Conceptueel

Wapke Feenstra, has lived and worked in Rotterdam since 1992. She co-founded Myvillages in 2003 and started the Rural School of Economics in 2019 - an infrastructure in Myvillages. Feenstra aims to create a new dynamic for fixed notions of and about the rural. Focus points are local resources and productions, agriculture and culture, internal and external perceptions. Recent commissions and exhibitions include The Rural, Whitechapel Gallery in London UK in 2019; Potato Growers at the Istanbul Biennale 2019, TR; Boerenzij in TENT-Rotterdam (with 140 Rotterdammers). With the Rural School of Economics (since 2020) she participated in Documenta fifteen with Kathrin Böhm and female producers from Kassel. Since 2020, Feenstra has also been working on Koe en Landschap with rural sociologist Inez Dekker and was working with Rijksmuseum Twenthe and was a SOILS-fellow at the Van Abbemuseum. She works on (re)rooting with Casco Art Institute from 2024, and the showed in Autumn 2025 the first results in Utrecht "Rerooting in the Polder". Her work and research is hands-on and often set out in public programs. She is listening and co-creating in an attempt to make multi-vocal, multi-species representations and activate the current landscapes by seeing them anew. Feenstra published with Jap Sam Books, MIT, and Jovis to name a few and she is a regular (keynote) speaker at international conferences and seminars. "How we see the rural is how we want to relate to it" is an important motto in exploring our visions on nature and Rural Undercurrents she can find everywhere, as the rural and the urban are obviously intertwined and interdepended.

FARMERS and RANCHERS 2012-2015 - Farmers and Ranchers is a transatlantic exchange project initiated and produced with young farmers from two typical rural clichés: cowboy-land Colorado in the United States and the Dutch dairy-farming province of Friesland. Both groups enter their adult farming lives as the landscapes they work undergo tremendous change: the Frisians farm small scale below sea-level, and the sea dykes are rising, while the endless plains of Colorado suffer drought as the snow in the winter is too less to welcome enough melting water in the dry seaeson. We learn about their daily works like checking the milk-robot or roping a young steer that needs to come over to the ranch. Also seasonal tasks are shared when they clean a canal to protect the Frisian water systems or harvest American corn driving on a huge harvester. www.farmersandranchers.nl (Farmers and Ranchers consist of a film and a series of foto's and a photo-curtain. The project is a co-operation with the M12-collective in Colorado USA.) In installations the project was presented in e.g.: Kunsthalle Bratislava, 2021 Bratislava SL; The Rural Side, Boerenzij, TENT, 2019 Rotterdam NL (solo WF); Setting the Table … , Whitechapel Gallery, 2019 London UK (solo MYV); Arts Maebashi, 2015 Maebashi Japan; International Village Show, 1/8 - 8/8, Museum for Contemporary Art (GFZK), 2015 Leipzig DE (solo MYV); Farmers and Ranchers, Fries Museum, 2014 - 15 Leeuwarden NL (solo WF). Part of public collections e.g.: Arts Maebashi Museum, Japan; Fries Museum, Leeuwarden en M12-Denver, USA. Screenings on request.
BOERENZIJ 2018-2020 - Boerenzij / The Rural Side takes the nickname of the Rotterdam-south-bank as a starting point. With Rotterdammers it questions the supposed contradiction between the countryside and the city that dominates not only popular perception but also urban and rural planning and politics. We consider urbanisation and urban culture as synonymous with progress. In public drawing lessons on the wharfs and allotments, Feenstra commissioned artists and invited residents to engage in slow looking – harking back to a tradition of ‘en plein-air’ landscape painting that was in vogue when industry and the harbour grew. The harbour city of Rotterdam was built by people who often came from elsewhere, mainly from the countryside. And rural migration goes on. Feenstra connected with them to share knowledge and to recall memories, revealing how a rural mindset is present within urban space. The exhibition resulting from this exchange invites us to reimagine our perceptions of the city and the countryside. Bottom-up approaches were central in this, acknowledging subjective and everyday forms of knowledge. With kale dinners, kitchen table discussions and visits to local farms, she brought people in contact with one another to exchange rural knowledge and memories of the countryside. A project and exhibition with TENT Rotterdam, support by Cultuurscouts Rotterdam and Mondriaan Fund. Photo Aad Hoogenboom - TENT-installation shot 1/16 The presentation Boerenzij consists of 2 films (1 geological animation (4 minutes) and a portrait-film (25 minutes)) - 240 drawingprints and 18 balconyscenes. The object are partly a loan and the installation can be rebuild and re-sized in order to fit your rooms). In MAY 2021 a book with 3 visual essays and 2 texts is compiled by Wapke Feenstra and published with Jap Sam Books. Made in cooperation Eleonoor Jap Sam, Maarten van Maanen and Kevser Güler. 2022 Boerenzij won the Brutus Award - 2023 Boerenzij is part of Soils in the Tarra Warra Museum in Victoria, Australia.
CO-FOUNDER OF MYVILLAGES 2003-NOW - Feenstra founded Myvillages as an NGO in NL with artists Antje Schiffers (DE) and Kathrin Böhm (UK/DE) in 2003. Myvillages is a platform that connects and invites. Working in different constellations the work addresses the relationship between the rural and the urban, looking at different forms of production, pre-conceptions and power relationships, while passionately questioning the cultural hegemony of the urban. The three artists, who met in the late 1990s, develop art concepts, implement them and co-create in (mainly) rural settings. Myvillages works trans-local and in international projects which range from informal presentations to long-term collaborations, from work in private spaces to museum exhibitions, from personal questions to multidisciplinary research and publications, from foraging to building permanent infrastructures. Myvillages has set up networks between rural cultures, where the founders themselves come from, and the urban culture where they studied art and run a studio. The collective works worldwide from 2007 and usually publishes in English or German. Wapke Feenstra is the farmer's daughter in the group. She is a co-editor of Images of Farming (Jap Sam Books 2011). And more recently The Rural - published by MIT / Whitechapel Gallery in 2019, in which she, together with Kathrin Böhm, pleads for a revision of the relationship between urban and rural areas. From 2017 this question shifted from a principled to an existential. Myvillages intends slowly but sure to use its art practices and networks in the coming years to work intergenerational. We will focus on formal and informal rural adaptation strategies in times of crisis, with a special focus on changing land use, food production and related skills. WEBSITES: www.wapke.nl AND www.myvillages.org THE PHOTO is made by Olga Gartman during a visit in 2019 to meet and greet the village committee of the project Made in Zvizzchi (2012-15).
WHITECHAPEL GALLERY and THE RURAL by MYVILLAGES (2019) - A SOLO AND A BOOK (2019) Gallery 5 and 6 from 7 May – 18 August 2019 'The rural is a multitude and it is dynamic, it can be attached or detached from a geography, it can be a mindset, a certain practice or a shared identity.' Myvillages (2019). Sliced ​​rocks, frog butter spoons, bottled spirits and tractor parts are imported by artist collective Myvillages (Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra and Antje Schiffers) to reimagine the Gallery as a mental and physical space to access the rural, allowing multiple voices, experiences and expectations to meet each other. Working internationally for more than fifteen years, Myvillages collaborate with rural communities in ways that reflect and engage local cultures, economies and resources. Negotiating differences and marginalized positions, the group proposes a transnational model of self-organization – from developing and selling products to making exhibitions, films and books. In times of deep social and political fracture Myvillages challenge preconceptions about the meaning of 'the rural' today, towards a new political imagination and a culture of radical solidarity and care. AND IN 2019 ALSO "THE RURAL" BOOK IN THE DoCA SERIES by MIT PRESS and WHITECHAPEL GALLERY. Wapke Feenstra is with Kathrin Böhm the editor of this book. The editing process stems from our own practice, from working as artists in the rural while raising questions about art in general. We are passionate about questioning the cultural dominance of the urban and advocate making space and time to understand the rural as a place of contemporary culture. Artists surveyed include Lara Almarcegui, Lina Bo Bardi, Ruth Ewan, Forensic Architecture, Amy Franceschini, Fernando García-Dory, Grizedale Arts, Sigrid Holmwood, Huit Façettes, Brian Jungen, M12, Renzo Martens, Lala Meredith-Vula, Grace Ndiritu, OHO Group, RobertSmithson, Rirkrit Tiravanja, Andrea Zittel, Stephen Willats, Bedwyr Williams, Franciska Zolyom Writers include Homi K. Bhabha, Okwui Enwezor, Hal Foster, Freeyad Ibrahim, Julia Kristeva, Henri Lefebvre, Marco Marcon, Georgy Nikich, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul ONeill, Mike Pearson, Doina Petrescu, Tomasz Rakowski, Natalie Robertson, Marco Scotini, Vandana Shiva, Monika Szewczyk, David Teh, Colin Ward, Grit Weber, Stephen Wright.
RURAL SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS (2020 till NOW) - Rural School of Economics will be a trans-local learning structure with a focus on non-linguistic rural knowledge exchange. The set up started in 2020 and will be ongoing. We as Myvillages work in 2021 with our partners in the villages Lumsden in Scotland, Pushkino in Russia and Zburazh in Belarus. We work in Germany (Alfter, Kassel and Hoefen), Italy (Pollinaria and Donna Paola) and the Netherlands (Schiermonnikoog, Brabant and Groene Hart) from 2021 as well. The Van Abbe Museum and Dutch farmers were our partners to prepare first classrooms in the Netherlands in 2021. 2022 was occupied with Lumbung and documenta fifteen. In 2023 Twente, the South of Friesland and Brezoi in Rumenia were added. The focus of the Rural School of Economics is on: o The rural as a place, a mind-set, a memory and a trans-local geography. Rural Mindsets are mobile and not just geographically defined. The school explores and recognize rural mindsets as a source of knowledge for a cultural and economic survival, that is rooted in intersectionality and interdependence. o A School is any form of organized gathering where we learn and mutually create a place for recognizing undervalued knowledge and sharing knowledge. Our “classrooms” can take many different forms, they can be informal and formal, on a field or around a table with food and drinks, they focus on localized knowledge and make trans-local connections. o Economy is etymologically and fundamentally a social and cultural phenomenon that is part of our everyday. The School is an attempt to recognize and practice a different economic reality that could work for all of us. The school is made by many.
KOE EN LANDSCHAP 2020-2024 - The cow in the pasture is a national Dutch cliché. It is an image that has existed in the Netherlands for centuries and does not seem to be subject to change. But nothing is less true. Especially since the last four decades, the appearance of the cow, the cattle feed and, therefore, the landscape around the cow, has changed significantly due to agricultural industrialisation in the Netherlands. Biodiversity, different soils and how to stay focussed on the agricultural transitions that will build on a sustainable future is what we explore together with stake-holders and the general public. The Cow and Landscape started its research in 2020 and is ongoing - the project consist of (drawn) herbaria with grasses and herbs, plans of farmyards, animations of the economics, films made on the farms and photographs from personal archives. Recurring questions within the project are: 'what does your best cow look like, past and present', 'what grows in the meadow', 'what can we learn from the past' and 'what will the future of Cow and Landscape farming look like?'. We also go for Plein Air sessions to the meadows where the cows graze and will run a public program in cooperation with our partners. Involved so far are villages, farmers and migrants in Twente, Salland, Noord Brabant, we learn from a cooperation on the island of Schiermonnikoog and will over the public programs connect to more rural areas that are specialised in dairy farming and the landscapes that feed them. Cow and Landscape is an ongoing project of the Rural School of Economics, which is supported by Van Abbemuseum, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Vrienden Lotterij Fonds, Mondriaan Fund, De Melkbrouwerij, De Melktapperij, Erfgoed Bossem, Op Schier, De Hofstad, Genneper Hoeve, Op den Hoek, Kasteelboerdeij Waalre, Janmiekeshoeve, ecologist and nature fans, artists, passers-by and Drawing Center Diepenheim.
Potato Growers meets Cappadox 2024
POTATO GROWERS and EATERS at CAPPADOX 2024 - Potatoes can trigger local stories about industrialization, land use and globalization, told through the daily practice of potato growers and their families in Cappadocia. During Cappadox 2024, a collaboration was set up with the Uçhisar Women's Cooperative - a community center restaurant run by a women's group. Over their rural connections I produced a photo essay on banners, made a series of potato stamps and wrote some of the reciepts we used on the tablecloth. So the theme was on the table. After an explanation by the Uçhisar Women's Cooperative and the invitation to add your own recipe on our tablecloth, the local knowledge and a translocal exchange about global food production came into focus. Because everyone eats potatoes. The festival and the exhibition had over 3500 visitors, the dinner was by invitation/registration and we served over 80 meals. During the opening weekend, the art scene flew in from Istanbul - the rest of the time the outdoor exhibition was visited by tourists and residents of Cappadocia. Under the theme “Changing Skies”, the festival’s contemporary art program was realized in loving memory of curator Fulya Erdemci, the founder and drafter of Cappadox Contemporary Art Program whom we lost in 2022, and will welcome visitors until June 13th. The festival invites Cappadoxians to reflect on our collective learnings from Cappadocia over the past four editions. Named after Erdemci’s 2001 exhibition at Karşı Sanat titled “Regrets, Reveries, and Changing Skies”, Cappadox calls upon participants to collectively remember the shared experiences formed gradually and encounters made possible by the multilayered historical, cultural, and physical geography of Cappadocia and reflect on them after six years. The artists participating in the exhibition were: Asuncion Molinos Gordo, Ayşe Erkmen, Christoph Schäfer, Erdağ Aksel, Guillaume Bijl, Hale Tenger, Halil Altındere, Maider Lopez, Murat Germen, Nermin Er, Nilbar Güreş, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Wapke Feenstra (Myvillages), Yasemin Özcan and Yaşam Şaşmazer. Some of the artists participated with works they had exhibited in the past, some brought a new interpretation to their works from that period, and some preferred to produce new works. Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt and Wapke Feenstra did not participate in the 2015-2018 editions, they spoke from 2019 with Fulya for the 5th edition - and therefore valuable for this Cappadox 2024 edition. For this outdoor exhibition a photo series on banners and a temporary outdoor restaurant were realized. Thanks to the Praktijk Bijdrage that made the co-production of a banner exhibition and the public potato dinner possible. Thanks Instanbul Biennale IKVS, curator Kevser Güler and her team. Thanks to all women of the Uçhisar Women's Cooperative and the Kadineli Restaurant’s Garden. Using locally grown potatoes, three favorite local potato dishes were cooked and we asked at the table the international visitors what their favorite potato dish was. It was a dinner as a work of art to explore the traditional and future-oriented practices of potato production within the local knowledge and culture. To enjoy connecting the rural and urban communities (farmers and tourists and festival visitors) through this simple and complex dinner by sitting together at the table and sharing recipes while eating a meal.
Cow and Landscape as a part of SOILS
SOILS (2021-2025) - This image shows a detail of the presentation in Van Abbemuseum June till November 2024 - Cow and Landscape as part of SOILS. From 2021 I am invited to be a SOILS fellow and to do research with Van Abbemuseum. It worked out to be a mind-blowing (un)learning curve. SOILS - the title of the project comes from the Palestinian writer and mathematician Munir Fasheh, who proposes four 'soils' as core to life on Earth. They are earth soil, cultural soil, communal soil and affection-spiritual soil.* These are the soils that we must nurture in order for us and all life on the planet to be cared for and nurtured by the soils in return. We believe that art can help this nurturing by creating a sense of tangible relationships that build on a quiet sense of mutual benefit and common interest. The SOILS exhibition sets out to show how those relations might be possible from points of view grounded in places that are called Wurundjeri Country, Rangan, Wallachia, Sinanché and De Peel among others. The catalog is available as a PDF on the Rural School of Economics website and the text I wrote with Inez Dekker is a reflection on the Cow and Landscape work made for the Soils exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum. Alongside a rich selection of images, it includes texts on the SOILS research by the three curators, artists and other key interlocutors: Teresa Cos Rebollo, Zena Cumpston, Charles Esche, (Wapke Feenstra/Inez Dekker), Victoria Lynn, Struggles for Sovereignty and Rolando Vazquez. - NOTE*Munir Fasheh, speaker, From Education to Soil: Ecoversities Planetary Gathering 2020, December 4, 2020.

Rerooting in the Polder

Datum:
Locatie: Casco Art Institute
In samenwerking met: Casco Art Institute, Myvillages and Rural School of Economics

In Casco Art Institute
4 gallery rooms:
The Green Room
The Polderlandscape
The Livingroom
Bringing agriculture and culture into active conversation, Rerooting in the Polder responds to the need for a more imaginative approach to “poldering.” What is needed is a cultural shift—one that moves beyond the narrow, modernist Dutch vision of landscape management, rooted in control, efficiency, and productivity—whose consequences ripple at both local and global scales.

https://casco.art/activity/rerooting-in-the-polder/

Soils - Koe en Landschap

Datum:
Locatie: Van Abbemuseum
In samenwerking met: Genneper Hoeve, De Hofstad, Kasteelboerderij Waalre, Op den Hoek, Janmiekeshoeve

Farmers & Artists

Datum:
Locatie: Les Abattoirs
In samenwerking met: Myvillages & Kathrin Böhm

Koe en Landschap- Twente en Salland

Datum:
Locatie: Rijksmuseum Twenthe
In samenwerking met: Artez Lectoraat, Erfgoed Bossem, De Melktapperij, De Melkbroewerij

The cow in the pasture is a national Dutch cliché. It is an image that has existed in the Netherlands for centuries and does not seem to be subject to change. But nothing is less true. Especially since the last four decades, the appearance of the cow, the cattle feed and, therefore, the landscape around the cow, has changed significantly due to agricultural industrialisation in the Netherlands.
The project consist of (drawn) herbaria with grasses and herbs, the best cows and plein air.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/52tsIPGYdSXNy6InB3eEnR

Kassel's Rural Undercurrents

Datum:
Locatie: Documenta fifteen, venues Huebner Areaal, Hafenstrasse 76 en ruruHaus - en de openbare ruimte van widerKassel.
In samenwerking met: documenta fifteen, runagrupa, ruruHaus, Frauentreff Brueckenhofen, Kultur Z Schlachthof, Niederkaufungen Kommune, Heidrun Hubenthal, Uplaender Bauernmolkerei, Naturkunde Museum Ottoneum en alle bezoekers. Lumbung Kios, Lumbung Space en Composting Knowledge.

We verkenden met alle partners Kassels landelijke onderstromen die liggen binnen de stedelijke en lokale voedselinitiatieven, komen uit een niet ver verwijderd agrarisch omliggend platteland en leven in de denkwijzen van bewoners wiens families van het platteland komen. (Binnen veel van de 39% van de bevolking met een migratieachtergrond.)
Landgebruik en natuurlijke hulpbronnen zijn sinds 2003 een focus van het door vrouwen geleide collectief Myvillages. Documentatie film via link

https://vimeo.com/757121738

Setting the Table: Village Politics

Datum:
Locatie: Whitechapel Gallery London
In samenwerking met: Whitechapel Gallery - The Rural Researchgroup

This exhibition includes a range of objects, products and films created with (My)villages around the world.

Sliced rocks, frog butter spoons, bottled spirits and tractor parts are imported to reset the gallery as a mental and physical space for the rural, to be shared as a place where multiple voices and experiences converge.

https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/myvillages/

Boerenzij

Datum:
Locatie: TENT Rotterdam
In samenwerking met: Diverse Rotterdammers met rurale interesse en wortels, plein-air tekenaars.

Boerenzij is de bijnaam voor Rotterdam-Zuid. De havenstad is met name gebouwd door mensen van elders, vaak afkomstig van het platteland. Feenstra ging naar hen op zoek, om boerenkennis uit te wisselen en herinneringen op te halen, en daarmee de plattelandsmentaliteit zichtbaar te maken die een onafscheidelijk onderdeel is van de stedelijke ruimte. De tentoonstelling die voortkwam uit deze uitwisseling, vormde een uitnodiging om het beeld van stad en platteland van nieuwe dimensies te voorzien.

www.tentrotterdam.nl/tentoonstelling/tentoonstelling-boerenzij

Potato Growers – Patates Yetiştiricileri

Datum:
Locatie: Istanbul Biennale 2019 and the potato fields of Cappadocia, Turkey
In samenwerking met: Istanbul Biennale 2019, IKVS and Kevser Güler

A travelreportage - a booklet - oral history and a VIP-potato-dinner at the Biënnale-opening with the favourite reciepts of our farmers.
-
Stories of industrialization, land-use and globalization told through the daily practices of three potato-grower families in Cappadocia Turkey.

Agricultural changes and extending global market relations have affected generations of past, current, and future potato-grower families.

http://www.myvillages.org/index.php?a=work&id=112
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