heem

The Fries Museum is presenting a group exhibition on the theme of ‘home’ from 28 April 2024 to 27 April 2025. What makes you feel at home somewhere, and what remains of this when you are away from home or if the place you call home has disappeared? And what does domestic happiness actually look like? Heem features contemporary work from the Fries Museum’s collection, including recent acquisitions by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum and Rory Pilgrim. The selection is enhanced by works from the Netherlands Collection. The exhibition opens concurrently with For Every Atom ... (featuring work by Semâ Bekirović) on Sunday 28 April in Leeuwarden. Admission to the museum is free on the opening day.

Having a home is a primal need and a fundamental human right, even if it is not always guaranteed. Seeking and creating a home is a universal urge and connects us all, human and animal alike. Yet home is not necessarily linked to a physical place. Indeed, for people who leave their home for whatever reason, it can take on an entirely different form. Various artists will reflect on this theme for the duration of the exhibition: from the ways we shape the places where we settle and the connection between home and identity, to the dislocation that can accompany leaving our place of residence, voluntarily or by necessity.

Artists
Heem features work from the Fries Museum’s collection, complemented by work from the Netherlands Collection. Ksenia Galiaeva (Pskov, Russia, 1976) documents her family and living environment in an intimate series of photographs, giving meaning to being rooted in a universe of her own. This primary yearning for protection and security can also be found in the colourful paintings of Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, UK, 1988). Conversely, Berend Strik (Nijmegen, 1960), Neo Matloga (South Africa, 1993) and Pink de Thierry (Haarlem, 1943 - Amsterdam, 2023) question the expectations and ideals of domestic happiness. The work Osedax by Edgar Cleijne (Eindhoven, 1963) and Ellen Gallagher (Providence, USA, 1965) will be on display from April to July. This installation takes visitors on a journey through an underwater world. From July, Erzen Shkololli (Pejë, Kosovo, 1976) shows the impact of violence on Kosovo Albanians in Pëjë at the time of the Kosovo War in the 1990s. Exhibited during the same period, the paintings of Natalia Ossef (El Kamechli, Syria, 1983) portray her native country, based on old photographs and postcards. By omitting faces, she emphasises the incompleteness of memories of this home from a distant past. The last room reflects on loss and uprooting, as seen in the drawings of Emma Talbot (Stourbridge, UK, 1969), which express the disruptive impact of the death of her husband. In RU, Petrit Halilaj (Kostërrc, Kosovo, 1986) presents his copies of Neolithic figurines from the village of Runik in Kosovo, which, like migratory birds in a communal nest, have become scattered in museums worldwide. Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum (Mochudi, Botswana, 1980) creates a mythological story about her origins in an imaginative animation. Finally, murals by Annabelle Binnerts (1995) adorn the exhibition walls, blurring the boundaries between inside and outside, the known and unknown.

Public opening
The exhibitions Heem and For Every Atom ....  will premiere concurrently on Sunday 28 April. Both exhibitions are free to visit on that day, as are the ongoing activities organised by the Fries Museum, which include a guided tour or walk through Leeuwarden with a city ecologist who makes the connection with nature from the moment he steps outside the museum. Or attend philosopher Eva Meijer’s interactive lecture on the relationship between humans and animals. Filmhuis Slieker will screen Bekirović’s latest film Once an Alien (2023). We’ve also organised the Candy for Animals workshop especially for families with children.