This work is about creating a relationship with the immediate natural world around me in a city, especially as industrial as Rotterdam where nature seems to be either seen as ”decoration” or “weeds”.
During the past year (2025) I have spent a lot of time in my small backyard “weed” garden I share with my partner in Rotterdam south, where I got to observe, learn from and care for neighbouring nature.
The word garden doesn’t have to mean decorative flowers in beautiful vases, vegetables in pots or bushes cut to be a perfect hedge. A garden can consist of horsetails, nightshades, dandelions, cats, pigeons, blackbirds, blue tits, robins, larks, an apple tree, the wind, the rain, humans, caterpillars, mosses, lichens, hedgehogs and sometimes even rats. The word garden means care for the inhabitants of the space that you share together.
These crochet tapestries are meant to illustrate the cyclical feeling of alive and ever-changing nature that exists everywhere, between pavement tiles, hanging on a web, dancing in the wind, or sliding off a leaf, but also the feeling of belonging to a place that you care for.
