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Machteld Teekens

to draw , spirituality , to write , to paint , riso print , nature , Literary , Body , Education , Ecology , crossover , Communication , Artistic research , Analytical

I was trained as a researcher in the field of education and training, but the visual arts had more of a hold on me.
Yet I have remained a researcher. In visual research, stories are a fixed component, how they travel through history and why people decide to create an oeuvre that deviates and stands out.
History is therefore important to me, visual history and the twist you can give it, consciously and unconsciously.
I worked in many places in Europe, Poland, England and Rome and worked with the KNIR on a project about the unusual ceramic Apollo from the 6th century BC. Another great interest is the mask or portrait. These 2 run through each other. I researched this with dozens of 7th grade primary school groups. Children were seduced by my story to make a green self-portrait. All these interactions help me with my own work and thinking about images, which I like to share on linked in.
Writing poems, blogs and stories is therefore an integral part of my work.
How you show that to the public is another chapter. Writing can help. The stage offers new possibilities.
I am involved in many networks of young artists in Rotterdam and feel artistically more at home with the generation of, say, my own children. I hope for a fruitful exchange of experience and ideas in the future, in which I can show the results of research. Based on a different inclusive way of thinking about body and mind, culture and nature, man and animal and not to forget: man and plant.

Transformative Years 2020-2022 - 2023, triptych, 180x 80 cm, oil and acrylic on canvas.
Spring (the Long Midst) - 2007-2022 gouache on paper, 700 x 100 cm. I like big art that you can carry with you and place everywhere you go. So carrying this one is part of the work of art. Also, it helped me to write about my art in the eighties
Installation Te-Amo Atelierweekend Jan van der Ploeghuis
Installatie Te-Amo Atelierweekend Jan van der Ploeghuis - 24 bi-manual colored copies from 2005 as an installation in the Jan van der Ploeghuis. Since 2020, several older artists have been established in the house.
in the woods
in the woods - washed ink in tea, drawing from 1999, colored in risoprint 2025 with stencil technique
Creating a booklet with bi-manual drawings in RISO, awarding Impulse and In-depth research
boekje maken met bi-manuele tekeningen in RISO, toekenning Impuls en VerdiepingAt 66, I talk to many young creative entrepreneurs from Rotterdam. They often spent their youth in other cultures and stayed after their studies. I talk about my career in art and notice that my research from the years 1988-2008 connects with the questions that are asked in art. These have to do with the unconscious, with expression and with traumas of ancestors or mothers in your country of origin, with who you are and how you can free yourself without judging it. Tracing back to the roots and placing the traumas in a larger context than individual fate. I see how people are searching for their place and how, even more than then, nothing is self-evident anymore. My research from those years was based on logging on to both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, by drawing with both hands at the same time. This brought me to pre-verbal sensations and themes related to my first memories or to the clan from which I came. Visual ideas from the world around me, including the art world, mixed with it. And so it was not purely automatic writing, but also a commentary on what was happening. I've been a member of the Boog community since July and I've never in my life had so many conversations about those drawings. I convert them into a riso print, which makes them more abstract. I also abstract the duplication effect that arises from this method. The inside of the head becomes visible, the thinking and feeling and the densification that this gives. This portrait series will be shown at an exhibition in the Grote Kerk in Beverwijk, on the occasion of the Coornhert Lecture. In a second project I want to unlock another part of my drawings. Those that have to do with the feminine, physicality, motherhood. Which show the body in the context of the world with everything that presents itself in the moment. Pain, love, loss, nature, young children and partner. Drawing with two hands is officially a therapy. But as an artist I wanted to expose a reality that blurs the boundaries between the self and the outside world. I wanted to create a picture of the phenomenology I had studied as a researcher in training, which offered a completely different view of the senses and provided evidence for 'being-in-the-world' (Merleau-Ponty) and 'thrownness' (Heidegger), not to mention the simultaneity of other cultures in your head (Walter Benjamin) that help you to better understand the world around you. At the same time, drawing was a powerful means of survival in a time when there was no attention for certain vague illnesses that prevented me from working. This problem has only become worse. Women are reporting in droves for ADHD screening and starting medication. Art seeks an answer and I am sure that two-handed drawing can be an answer if I can select and present the work in a more abstract way. The result is surprising, moving and sometimes shocking. Finally, I would like to make a booklet in a hundred copies with drawings in riso and texts.

tentoonstelling portretten in riso

Date:
Location: Grote Kerk, cultureel podium
In association with: Bert Kisjes, tentoonstellingsmaker voor de Grote kerk in Beverwijk

The exhibition in Beverwijk focuses on the Coornhert Lecture in November.
In this context I would like to give a presentation/workshop on two-handed drawing as a way to reconcile opposites

Dark Matters

Date:
Location: Paradijskerk
In association with: singing club

Since 2022 I am a member of the singing club. I participated in the choir, an activity led by Tisa N. Herlec. Being a member, a singer in public Art space, is due to my interest in crossovers

Productie de Zee

Date:
Location: de Banier
In association with: De Oude Rotteen

To get to know the network better I joined the dance group for the production of the Oude Rotten. The performance took place and the images of the changing sea landscapes of Mariek van der Lippe.
I tried out the roles I had learned in the 'sensing self'

Verhalen in Pastel

Date:
Location: Klooster Oude Noorden
In association with: Klooster Oude Noorden Huis van de Wijk

With the help of a Residents' Initiative, I refreshed my didactic method by adding story writing to drawing activities with 7 adult visual arts amateurs.
This method comes from the Language Development world and was the basis of my educational activities in schools for decades.
The combination was very well received by the participants as a contribution to emotional health and processing difficult life facts in a symbolic way.

poetry performance

Date:
Location: Batavierhuis
In association with: Emily GAbrielle Aidulis

Fire on your path (2023, new work)
Emily Gabrielle Aidulis (LT) – movement, voice
Machteld Teekens (NL) – poetry, voice

In the Veda, butter or ghee plays a central role in creation. Precious food like ghee plays a central role in myth and ancient religion. In a dance and speech performance, we aim to explore the origins of circularity. Where circularity ends, there begins the notion of time and breath. Earth is than opposite to heaven, and night contrasts day.

https://www.batavierhuis.nl/productie/sounding-here-2/

'swift like seed' poetry performance t.g.v. het Batafest 2023

Date:
Location: Batavierhuis
In association with: Batavieren

The poem 'swift like seed' consists of 11 lines that describe the rest of a seed in the imperative mood, with verbs like 'ga', 'drijf', 'slaap uit' 'landt'. so that the listener is taken along in the landscapes and seasons. From autumn through winter to spring.
The singing and repetition of the poem was accompanied as an improvisation by three Batavians: violin, drum and guitar.

Oertekenen

Date:
Location: Restaurant en cultureel centrum Spirit
In association with: groene Passage

For thirty years I have been a maker and produce drawings, paintings, poems and columns. I can also always be found somewhere in some social project, with or without children. In recent years I have been working with ceramics. I call it primal drawing in space.
In the exhibition I want to draw attention to a project in Rome from 2011, for which I made a reconstruction of the Etruscan 2600 year old 'mother goddess as nurse'. I worked closely with Iefke van Kampen.

Luisje en Vlootje

Date:
Location: diverse locaties
In association with: bachfestival Dordrecht

For the Bach Festival I created a narrative performance for nursing homes and libraries, the target group was 2-100 years old. Demented people had to be able to get something out of it and toddlers.

https://www.cultuurmenu.nu/luisje-en-vlootje/
This artist has no awards yet.