Kers Gallery presents solo presentation by Raquel van Haver at Scope Immersive

Thu, Sep 17 - Sun, Sep 27  2020

At Scope Immersive, Amsterdam-based Kersgallery will feature Amo a la reina, a solo presentation by Raquel van Haver that centers around the status of Colombian women, female social leaders, migration and gender stories.

Amo a la Reina, 2020, 210 x 190 cm, photoprint diasec mounted, edition 1/8. Courtesy of the artist and Kersgallery

Van Haver refers to her work as loud and spiritual paintings. Paintings that you can refer to as dreamscapes, or collages that can be seen as small windows to scenes from everyday life. Paintings that sympathetically portray people in and around the artist’s own surroundings. Placing friends and familiar faces in new surroundings, researching connections, similarities and differences across the interconnected world where migration and history in culture and habits play a big role. Drawing from her own references and stories that haven’t been told yet. She works on burlap, combining oil paint, charcoal, resin, hair, paper, tar and ash in heavily textured compositions.

Amo a la Reina, 2020, 210 x 190 cm, photoprint diasec mounted, edition 1/8. Courtesy of the artist and Kersgallery

The paintings explore colors, light, identity, meditation, presentation, spirituality, urbanism and the diaspora, and draw from African, Western, Caribbean and Latin American cultures within her community in the South-East part of Amsterdam, Netherlands. More recently, she has spent long periods abroad, gathering source material in both West Africa and South America. Her works are often monumental in scale, at times dark and ominous, colorful and energetic, and continue to negotiate boundaries between alienation and recognition.

Amo a la Reina, 2020, 210 x 190 cm, photoprint diasec mounted, edition 1/8. Courtesy of the artist and Kersgallery

Van Haver was born in 1989 in Bogota, Columbia. She lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Solo exhibitions include ‘Spirits of the Soil’ at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, November 2018 – April 2019. Her work has also been exhibited at the Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands, Lagos photo festival Nigeria and BOZAR Centre For Fine Art Brussels. She recently won the prestigious Dutch Royal Prize for Painting. And in 2019 she was awarded with the Amsterdam Award, a prestigious award for talented locals. Van Haver graduated from the HKU, Fine Arts, Utrecht, in 2012.

Amo a la Reina, 2020, 210 x 190 cm, photoprint diasec mounted, edition 1/8. Courtesy of the artist and Kersgallery

With Amo a la Reina, the artist is researching her own past and the status of female social leaders in the Colombian regions, while using art as a tool to connect people and to investigate the importance of womanhood. Within her own past, her fantasy and the reality of the social leaders in the Colombian regions. According to Van Haver: “Connecting people in daily life is really important. Something so small can move mountains.”

Amo a la Reina, 2020, 210 x 190 cm, photoprint diasec mounted, edition 1/8. Courtesy of the artist and Kersgallery

This series will be presented in 2020 and celebrated with several museum shows, gallery presentations and printed issues.