In his solo exhibition at the Centraal Museum, Willem de Rooij uses the paintings of Dirk Valkenburg as a starting point to explore how the eighteenth-century Dutch elite employed visual culture to promote and reinforce colonial ideology.
Early eighteenth-century Dutch painter Dirk Valkenburg (1675–1721) was among the first Europeans to depict Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese plantations. At the same time, he produced hunting still lifes and portraits of wealthy Dutch patrons in the Netherlands. The breadth of his oeuvre makes it especially significant for research into colonial image production and the construction of the “white gaze.”
Since the early 1990s, Dutch artist Willem de Rooij has created temporary installations that investigate the politics of representation through appropriation and collaboration. For this exhibition, he has brought together, for the first time, 25 works by Valkenburg. De Rooij presents these paintings in unconventional combinations, inviting visitors to reflect on how eighteenth-century art functioned as a tool for legitimising and perpetuating colonial oppression.
Valkenburg is a partner project of Hartwig Art Foundation.