Lotus Rooijakkers

This work emerged out of having to deal with the mystified and romantic image of the artist. While the art academy pushes us to challenge our artistry, I find myself obsessively collecting, archiving, and then meticulously placing fire extinguishers in fixed positions at a regular distance from each other. 

I want to challenge what a safe space is for an autonomous artist, where speaking about business and networking is often considered taboo. The extinguishers provide me with a feeling of pressure and radical safety as they shelter the desk. Here I will spend my time with the suppressed reality of an artist and the forgotten entrepreneurship it actually requires. Will I ever escape my desk even though it has become part of my creative

Thesis:

Lotus takes the reader on a bumpy ride along a broad range of subjects, that all have to do with the position of artists in contemporary society and her own positions as an emerging artist. Taking the history of museums as a starting point, she relates her own experiences as a host in museum West and her time at the academy to questions on how to survive as an artist in the age of cancel culture. These questions are discussed in an often polemical way, arguing against fashionable contemporary stances. The issues are also raised in interviews she performed with a visiting artist at West and a KABK teacher. The lack of a well-structured research plan and reading program is a little bit problematic, but this is compensated by the sheer enthusiasm, self-relativization and Lotus’ sincere drive to maintain a critical attitude towards seemingly self-evident ideas in the art world. Her thesis, although rambling and wayward, surely is an entertaining read.

-Onno Schilstra