CHRYSTL RIJKEBOER

‘Companionship for the home’ at Art Center Haarlem.

The exhibition 'Companionship for the home' at the Art Center Haarlem, at Gedempte Oude Gracht 117-121 Haarlem. A ceramics exhibition from November 24, 2022 until January 14, 2023. Participating artists: Jurrijn Huffenreuter, Nastia Calaca, Liesbet Milort and me. Supplemented with art from the lending collection.

Interview TV North Holland, Culture Club

Human hair and grandma's porcelain, Chrystl makes art out of everything

Soup tureens with cheerful animal heads, kitschy porcelain figurines with a Big Mac in their hand, the Coronavirus with legs; in the Haarlem studio of Chrystl Rijkeboer it is full of work in progress. Culture Club visited her.

'Party animals' is what Rijkeboer calls her tableware with cheerful animal heads. Just like the porcelain figurines, the idea originated in Corona time. "I needed something cheerful, work where I didn't have to think too much and which looked ‘nice’.”

After the death of her parents, Chrystl suddenly had a lot of new workingmaterial. "Porcelain figurines have always been my 'guilty pleasure'. Ever since I was very little I loved the figurines in my grandmother's closet, but I was only allowed to look at them with my hands behind my back. When I cleared out the house my parents, I came across so many old treasures that I thought: they are mine now and I do what I want with them. Actually I make recycling art."

Not a nice little farmer
Yet the works are not only cheerful and funny. Rijkeboer also has something to say. "Look", she points to a figurine of a Delft blue peasant with an inverted flag as a sash: "I'm going to make pieces of meat and offal, it's also a kind of criticism, like: this is not just a sweet little peasant. Art should be aesthetic, but it should also be abrasive."

human hair
And ‘sanding’ has been doing its job for decades. Before turning to porcelain and pottery, Chrystl made art from human hair. After she had spun the hair that was often sent to her, she knitted or crocheted figures or objects from it. "I understand that it has a dark side. When people saw my work, they often thought it was horse hair. When I told them that I worked with human hair, they were very shocked."

"All my work is about identity, but the hair art has much more impact than the ceramics. I haven't worked with hair for some time now, because it was too gloomy and too labour-intensive, but now I'm ready for a combination. Who knows what the future will bring "

Chrystl's work can be seen this weekend and November 12 and 13 during the Kunstlijn Haarlem in the building below her studio at Smedestraat 9 in Haarlem.