Karin van Dam (1959) is renowned for her installations, composed using materials such as boat bumpers, rope, and insulation pipes. She has even used complete pre-fabricated plastic ponds, hanging them in the space of the Vleeshal in Middelburg. Van Dam sees her installations as spatial drawings, allowing the viewer to walk through them. The installations are always prepared in small-scale drawings, often incorporating spatial objects such as rubber caps, rope, and wooden sticks. Urban structures and street patterns are an important starting point in her work, where she creates a free, intuitive translation using the possibilities offered by the materials and objects she finds.
For years, Karin van Dam has been working on her ongoing project titled “Cities in Transit/Traveling Cities.” The title is a reference to Italo Calvino’s novel, “Invisible Cities,” in which Marco Polo tells Kublai Khan about imaginary cities. Van Dam’s early works in this series were inspired by Italian Renaissance towns: black facades with arches and battlements made of cardboard, combined with wool and other materials. Over time, the cities become more abstract and are freely hung in space. In recent years, she has collaborated extensively with the Textielmuseum Tilburg, where she has complex round knitted coverings made for her work.
www.ftn-books.com has several publications on van Dam now available.
