SPLINTER
How does one deal with trauma? How do you deal with anxiety, pain, sorrow and loss? Artwork Splinter is the result of Ciska's personal quest in processing traumatising experiences, pain and anxiety. Raised by a traumatized victim of Japanese concentrationcamps during World War II Ciska tried to comfort her mother for years, sleeping near her side in the same bed. Each night her mother made her catch tigers under her bed, allthough ofcourse there were no tigers actually present. Gradually her mom's tigers became Ciska's tigers, especially after having worked for many years as a humanitarian aidworker in Africa on the eve of the Genocide in Rwanda and in the townships and poor areas around Cape Town, South Africa, where in 1995 she succesfully helped to set up one of the first anti AIDS projects in the world. The images and memories she collected in those years further traumatised her and worsened her feeble sleeping pattern. Plagued by helish anxiety and insomnia it took her years to chase away the tigers from underneath her her bed! Returning from Africa to the Netherlands the memory of those years inspired Ciska to create Splinter, a colossal wooden four-poster bed, with television screens and surrounded by plaster-cast sculpted tigers. On the television screens the horrors she witnessed during her stay in Africa which haunted her for years are captured.
The tiger sculptures are part of a flock of emotions, a herd of phobia, symbolizing unrestrained feelings generally associated with death, discomfort, illness and catastrophe. They also symbolize our personal fears and frustrations which hold us back from becoming the best person we can become for ourselves and others.
The installation Splinter is a symbol for people's need to reflect on and psychologically process emotions. The bed also symbolizes a place we call home, a safe haven where a person finds shelter and safety, where he or she can reflect on his or her position in life. It is the place where we can escape from the hardships of daily life and rebalance our lives by elaborating on influences from the outside world and seeking to establish an internal dynamic optimum. It is a place where we can visualize and make believe.
