New exhibition: ‘Pillars of life’ by artist Lizan Freijsen (1960-2024)

News ARTIS-Groote Museum

11 September 2024

The ‘Pillars of Life’ exhibition, designed by artist Lizan Freijsen, is on display at the ARTIS-Groote Museum from today.

Pillars of Life at the ARTIS Groote Museum

Her latest work is an ode to invisible trees, which, like piles, carried the city of Amsterdam, lifting it out of the swamp.

Lizan Freijsen passed away completely unexpectedly in February this year. Following her passing, the TextielMuseum, where her artwork was in the making, and ARTIS-Groote Museum, together with her family, decided to continue the planned exhibition after all. A modest exhibition with a big story.

Visualising invisible beauty

Tufts specialist Karen Zeedijk of the TextielLab, with whom Freijsen had worked more often, picked up the thread. With the necessary ingredients, she was able to finish the rug in Lizan's mind. ‘A soft spot of attention,’ is how Freijsen described her new artwork for ARTIS-Groote Museum. Freijsen was fascinated by a cross-section of a wooden foundation pile exhibited in the museum, which has supported the museum for over 160 years. Turning something invisible into valuable products was her way of showing what is present. By magnifying a humble phenomenon and translating it into wool, the subject can be viewed with a different attention. Also with ‘Pillars of Life’, Freijsen focuses on a blind spot and visualises its beauty. How this process happened can be seen in the introductory film in the exhibition, made by Marieke van der Lippe.

Speaking about the purpose of ‘Pillars of Life’, Freijsen said: ‘Making this visible again shows that the relationships in life, which is what the Groote Museum is also about for me, requires a completely different arrangement. It also requires a different place of humans, and in that I often miss attention to plants'.

In an interview for ARTIS magazine, a month before Freijsen passed away, you can read more about her vision for the exhibition she was to create.

read the interview

Monumental photographic work by landscape photographer Hans Wilschut

For the exhibition, photographer Hans Wilschut created a monumental photographic work of a Norwegian forest. Like the Groote Museum, the city of Amsterdam is largely founded on wooden piles that originally came from Norway. Wilschut's work portrays an equivalent forest as from the time the trees were cut down in Norway in the 16th century. The picture can be seen along with the original piles that stood under the Groote Museum. The museum has additionally put together a tour entitled ‘The way of the tree’, which takes you past ten permanent collection points about trees.

Lizan Freijsen and ARTIS previously worked together

Lizan Freijsen's ability to make nature visible in its full breadth was earlier reason for ARTIS to commission her for a work of art. In 2021, she created a wall composition, on which she worked for a year and a half, for ARTIS-Micropia's permanent collection. By making the growth and making processes of fungi visible in it, Freijsen wanted to contribute to the appreciation and imagination of these wonderful micro-organisms. The work can still be seen in Micropia.