Image: The Storyteller, Wessel Verrijt, 2020
Carnaval is a celebration of creativity, the moment a city is turned upside down. What is normally ugly becomes beautiful for three days, who normally possesses power has to watch from the sideline for three days. Also art, normally the domain of creativity, often looks from the sidelines during Carnaval, it has no audience for a moment because for three days everyone is performer and audience at the same time.
Artist Wessel Verrijt will get involved in the festivities in the upcoming days. In a four-meter-high suit, made of second-hand materials and household objects, he will move through Maastricht’s Carnaval at an exasperatingly slow pace. Assistants will lay out a course of wooden planks so that his unwieldy outfit will move flawlessly over the cobblestones in the city centre. Is there a role for art during the three days of the year that everyone is an artist?
About Wessel Verrijt
Wessel Verrijt (1992) graduated in 2018 with the Optocht Der Autonomen from the AKV St Joost in ’s-Hertogenbosch. With his provisional builds, he travels from one place to another like a fair, and sees the building and dismantling as a ritual of a bigger narrative.
The Curator
Joep Vossebeld was asked to make a program for Marres during Carnaval in Maastricht. The program of 2020 is the first of his series.
