Browsing Species 2018
Een bezoek aan het stadspaleis Doria Pamphilj in Rome bleek de inspiratiebron voor de serie Browsing Species. Niet minder dan twee okapi’s gidsen de kijker door de spiegelzaal van dit paleis, dat vol kunstschatten hangt. In de volgende ruimte vang je daar al een glimp van op: het wereldberoemde portret van Paus Innocentius X geschilderd door Diego Velázquez.
De huidige eigenaar van het paleis is een nazaat van deze in 1644 gekroonde paus die werd geboren als Giovanni Battista Pamphilj. Tegen alle verwachtingen in bleek een brief aan deze Prins Jonathan Doria Pamphilj voldoende om een foto-enscenering in de spiegelzaal te komen maken.
Het resultaat is een surrealistisch beeld waarin aanvankelijk grote tegenstellingen verrassend bij elkaar komen. Allereerst is er het eclectische uiterlijk van de okapi, met zijn kenmerken van de giraffe en de zebra en met een vacht van bruin velours. Zijn oorspronkelijke habitat ligt diep in de bossen van Congo. Een groter contrast tussen natuur en cultuur is amper denkbaar, en toch lijkt het dier met zijn statige, elegante uitstraling niet eens zo’n vreemde verschijning in het paleis.
Elegantie en esthetiek, luxe en stofuitdrukking, uniciteit en waarde. Het zijn de ingrediënten die in Browsing Species het paleis, de okapi’s en Velázquez’ wereldberoemde portret tot één soort lijken te smeden.
Lambda Photo print semi-mat, 3mm Trulife Perspex, 3mm Dibond, 110 cm x 73cm, The Hague 2018
A letter to Prince Jonathan Doria Pamphilj dd 17 June 2018
Dear Jonathan,
How have you been faring? I’m writing to you to let you know I have finished the art piece (at long last) and named it Browsing species. First off I’d like to thank you ever so much for making it possible for me to make the piece. I’ve been putting some of my considerations to paper and wanted to share them with you. Obviously I’m very interested in your thoughts and ideas about it.
Wikipedia: “For years the okapi was unknown to the Western world until the beginning of the 20th century. Europeans in Africa had heard of an animal that they came to call the African unicorn. In his travelogue of exploring the Congo, Henry Morton Stanley mentioned a kind of donkey that the natives called the Anti, which scholars later identified as the okapi.
When the British governor of Uganda, Sir Harry Johnston, discovered some pygmy inhabitants of the Congo being abducted by a showman for exhibition, he rescued them and promised to return them to their homes. The grateful pygmies fed Johnston’s curiosity about the animal mentioned in Stanley’s book. Though Johnston did not see an okapi himself, he did manage to obtain, with the help of the pigmies, pieces of striped skin and eventually a skull. From this skull, the okapi was correctly classified as a relative of the giraffe. In 1901, the species was formally recognised as Okapia johnstoni.”
I hardly ever use animals in my art pieces but the fascination for the Okapi is one that I had for a long time. It’s one of those images that I subconsciously carried around with me and it was when I wandered the halls and rooms of the Doria Pamphilj palazzo that I realised what to do with this intriguement.
There is a very natural resemblance between the atmosphere of the okapi and the Renaissance style of the Doria Pamphilj palazzo. It’s the animals look and energy that make a beautiful almost harmonious fit with the rich decorations and luscious gold ever present. In the Congo okapi’s live solitary in the woods and are hardly ever seen by humans. They’re a shy animal and their solitude fits their natural contemplative look. This look seems to suggest a lightly depressed tendency and a complex emotional inner life, to me. A skittish nature yet proud posture and those deep big black eyes in their grey coloured head. They could be a king or nobleman being very bored with all he has, longing for that what he has not, the unobtainable. In the Netherlands we have a rich merchant whom said: ‘I’d rather be depressed in the back of a Rolls Royce then in a Deux chevaux’.
So, even when it’s highly unlikely and seemingly contradictory for okapi’s to wander through the palazzo, they are a perfect match. The gold and tapestries of the palazzo compliment beautifully with the lavish velvety shine of the okapi’s skin. I’ve seen the Okapis in the zoo where they obviously don’t belong and I dare say that besides their natural habitat in the forests of the Congo they’re second natural habitat would be wondering the hall’s of the Doria Pamphilij museum. Browsing species.
It looks like the okapi is naturally made up out of two different species. Often when two different things or entities are combined into one there’s some form of conflict. It’s everywhere around us and If done well there’s a determination in the will to combine that appeals to me. For instance in Zaha Hadid’s (died in 2016) build of the harbour house in Antwerp. https://www.dearchitect.nl/projecten/havenhuis-antwerpen-zaha-hadid-architects
There are other animals made up out of different species like the platypus but they’re aesthetically les interesting to me because of a lack of elegance that the okapi does have. Okapi’s are also priceless because there’s so few of them. It’s this elegance, luxuriousness, rareness and pricelessness that binds the palazzo Doria Pamphilj, the portrait of Innocentius X by Velazquez and the okapi’s into the art piece. Browsing species.
Looking forward to seeing you.
All the very best!
Jeronimus
