Danute Līva

What defines or tells a real story about a place? Is it green shards or embroidery of a swan? Maybe both? Every space is full of material evidence that whispers something to you; each of them is important because together they create a space!

Come with me to Urk, it’s a unique fishing village in the Netherlands that is known for its history of drastic change; it used to be an island up until the 1940’s when it became attached to a polder–reclaimed land from the sea.

However, Urk went through millions of other changes that followed one another. The difference about when it got attached to the mainland is that this was done under the name of a massive man-made project, one that was considered a ‘peak’ in the Dutch battle against the water. All the changes have one common aspect though – becoming, which identifies change and shift, that are considered the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday world. Urk was born out of change and inherited the same charactreristic.

The installation "You're like a leaf that doesn't know it is a part of a tree" encapsulates four facets that visually depict the changes that Urk has experienced and continues to undergo today.