From 14 September through 30 October 2023, the lunchroom of Museum Het Schip presents the temporary exhibition What if? by Myrte Legerstee.
Myrte Legerstee (1994) was born in Wijk bij Duurstede and lives and works in Utrecht. In 2018 she obtained her Bachelor Illustration Design from the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) and she is currently pursuing a master's degree in Art, Culture and Politics at the University of Amsterdam. Legerstee's illustrations can be described as raw, cynical and surreal. In her work, absurdity serves as an instrument to make both her (socially) critical view and her amazement palpable.
In a sometimes unpleasant manner and by creating friction, Legerstee intends to leave the viewer wondering, thinking and sharing her thoughts on how we shape society together. She draws inspiration from conversations, philosophy, history and the news. Her work is both story telling and layered, in both the literal and figurative sense. Her illustrations are constructed through a collage-like technique. She digitally adds color to the analog charcoal drawings. This technique gives her plenty of room to create a deliberate image and animate the drawings at a later time.
The Amsterdam School was not only a leading movement in the field of architecture and (applied) arts, but also introduced new questions about the arrangement of everyday life. What was daily life going to look like and in what way was one person going to relate to another? Legerstee plays with contemporary issues such as climate change and social constructs, which she puts under a magnifying glass through exaggeration and absurdism. The situations she depicts are absurd because, for example, they have an exaggerated socialist slant, such as sharing a toothbrush because of the depletion of our resources. By using such - at times comical - comparisons, she asks the overarching philosophical question: what is it that makes life liveable?
All artworks displayed are available for purchase directly from the artist.
