Inspired by the historical Gobelin Room in Kunstmuseum Den Haag, artist Natasja Kensmil has completed a contemporary mural entitled Allegory of Glaciers in one of the museum’s monumental stairwells. By commissioning this piece from Kensmil, the museum is carrying on the tradition of inviting artists to create works in its stairwells, thereby entering into an artistic exchange with the building and the collection.
ALLEGORY OF GLACIERS
Natasja Kensmil has transformed the stairwell into a world of melting glacial landscapes in which mythology and reality merge and commingle. Like a pinboard covered in old postcards, the panoramas elicit memories. The scenes were inspired by archival images of glaciers, pages from medieval manuscripts and fragments of historical maps. This is Kensmil’s way of underscoring glaciers’ vital role as natural archives in which the history of our planet is documented.
Kensmil has approached the stairwell as a continuous ‘painting’ consisting of multiple separate paintings and drawings on canvas, hung independently, across which the mural unfolds. The canvases emphasize the various illusions of depth created in the work by the architecture of the space. The whole brings together drawing and painting: sinuous drawn lines and painted fields of colour alternate with and flow into one another. At times, drawing comes to the fore, while at other moments the painterly gesture emerges. The result is a layered image which further strengthens the spatial illusion created by the mural.
GOBELIN ROOM
Kensmil also drew inspiration for her mural from the historical period rooms in the Kunstmuseum. These 17th and 18th-century interiors are a permanent part of the museum building. Today, these rooms offer a glimpse into the lives of the Dutch elite who were responsible for governing the country and the regions colonized by the Netherlands. Various imagery and decorative motifs from the period rooms are echoed in this stairwell. The Gobelin Room in particular was a vital source of inspiration. In this 1710 reception room, the tapestries woven by Alexander Baert form a backdrop consisting of an imaginary wooded landscape populated by water elements and exotic birds. Overhead, the Roman goddesses of wisdom and justice (Minerva and Justitia, respectively) float across the painted ceiling.
DYING GLACIERS
Rather than an idyllic green paradise, Kensmil has depicted a melting landscape of ice and snow. She expands the mythological pantheon with various nature goddesses connected to this threatened world. Pachamana, from Incan culture, is the goddess of Mother Earth. The Inuit revere Sedna, the mother of the sea. Lastly, Kensmil depicts Pele, the volcano goddess of Hawai’i, where glaciers once existed as well – thereby pointing out the vanishing nature of these areas. As a result of climate change, industrialization and colonization, the original inhabitants are losing the homelands they have traditionally associated with divine forces.
In order to create space for Kensmil’s new work, the mural by Günter Tuzina has been temporarily covered up by experts. Earlier this year, and at the museum’s request, Hadassah Emmerich created a mural entitled Petals Pulp Papaya Plunge in another stairwell. Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum is scheduled to complete the last in the series of three new murals this summer.
FRIENDS OF THE MUSEUM
Allegory of Glaciers has been made possible in part thanks to a generous contribution from the Society of Friends of Kunstmuseum Den Haag. With this gift in honour of the Society’s 160th anniversary, its members have invested in the continuation of this special museum tradition.
ABOUT NATASJA KENSMIL
Natasja Kensmil (1973) lives and works in Amsterdam and has been active in the arts for over 20 years. She trained at the Vrije Tekenacademie, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Ateliers, all of which are located in Amsterdam. Major themes in Natasja Kensmil’s work include the dark sides of the Netherlands’ colonial past, religion, mysticism and mythology. Her work as been displayed in Andriesse Eyck Gallery (Amsterdam), the Royal Hibernian Academy (Dublin) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington), among others, and has been acquired by collections such as the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Kunstmuseum Den Haag and the Dallas Museum of Art (USA). Kensmil was awarded the Johannes Vermeer Award in 2021, with the jury praising her work as ‘healing, constructive and critical’.
This project has been made possible in part by the Municipality of The Hague, VriendenLoterij, the Society of Friends of Kunstmuseum Den Haag (Vereniging Vrienden van Kunstmuseum Den Haag) and the Mondriaan Fund.
Photo: Gerrit Schreurs