AMSTERDAM.- Inhabiting the border between straight photography, performance, and sculpture, Scarlett Hooft Graafland's photographs are records of highly choreographed live performances that are currently on exhibition at EENWERK until January 31st, 2023. In these isolated and often surreal landscapes, she constantly refers to a more profound cultural discourse of her surroundings. In Tracks she shows her latest work: these are embroideries on photographs, through which the viewer can experience how her embroidery on photos intensifies and accentuates visual perception. The photos were taken on the island of Socotra in Yemen, Bolivia, Norway, and the Netherlands.

Scarlett Hooft Graafland has won international fame for her images of uncultivated landscapes that she contrasts with cultured stagings, often in collaboration with local people.

In addition, there is a seldom exhibited installation from 2002, Au Castor (dedicated to the beaver), also featuring embroidery, in which the artist highlights the animality of the female reproductive organs. This work originated when Hooft Graafland was studying in New York and delved into the city’s seventeenth-century beginnings as a Dutch trading post for the beaver hides Native Americans brought for exchange. This trade grew to such an extent that by the early twentieth century the beaver was almost extinct in North America. Hooft Graafland got the idea to produce a gesamtkunstwerk, a collaborative work of art, in rural upstate New York: works of art were created by the beavers gnawing on wood and building dams.

She happened upon the American slang word ‘beaver’ and discovered that many animals are used in slang in various languages to refer to female genitalia. She embroidered this extensive collection of animals on 64 satin cushions, along with the name of each country, and grouped them in categories like ‘Fish’, ‘Birds’, ‘Rodents’, ‘Amphibians’, ‘Cats’, ‘Insects’ and ‘Other Mammals’.

The exhibition will be opened on 25 November from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. by Sabrina Kamstra, Head of Art Affairs at Amsterdam UMC (Academic Medical Centre and VU University Medical Centre), whose collection includes several major works by Hooft Graafland.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, designed by Irma Boom and with an introductory text by Els Barents, former director of Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, which originally hosted the first retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work.




Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s work is included in the collections of museums worldwide, such as Fotografiska, the photo museum in Stockholm, the Museum of Photography in Seoul, South Korea, the Landskrona Museum in Sweden, the Museo Nacional de Arte in La Paz, Bolivia, and Huis Marseille, Museum of Photography in Amsterdam. Her work has been shown at numerous international exhibitions such as at the MOCA museum in Toronto, Canada, the MAC museum in Lima, Peru, Dubai Photo, Rencontres d'Arles, and Photo Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

She received a BFA at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, The Netherlands, and an MFA at the Parsons School of Design in New York.

Publications include:

-Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Shores like you, with essays by Maarten Doorman, Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, and SHG, NAI 010, 2016

-Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Unlikely Landscape, with essays by Sunyoung KIM and Maarten Doorman, Youngsook SONG / Ga-Hyeon Foundation of Culture, Museum of Photography Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2014

-Scarlett Hooft Graafland in Altiplano, with an essay by Allain-Paul Mallard, WBooks & Van Vlissingen Art Foundation / Inspiration Series, 2012

-Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Soft Horizons, with essays by Sue Steward, Els Barents, Nanda van den Berg, Kehrer Verlag, 2011

-Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Tracks, with an essay by Els Barents, Galerie EENWERK Amsterdam 2022