10 Questions with Jikke Lesterhuis

Jikke Lesterhuis is a multidisciplinary artist from the Netherlands, currently based in Amsterdam. She never stopped drawing from the moment she learned how to use a pencil. After dabbling in various courses, she eventually got her Bachelor's degree in cultural heritage, with a focus on exhibition design. However, her urge to make things turned out to be stronger than her degree, so she absorbed herself into her art right after graduating. With a fascination for movement, it made sense to start telling stories in animation. Animation requires sound, and with her musical background of playing the violin for a long time, she started making the sounds for her animations herself using field recordings, her violin, and the modular synthesizer. This path eventually led to the discipline in which she mainly works now; installations.
Jikke currently focuses on ways to bring the 2D medium into a 3D space. Using her curiosity and eagerness to learn, she keeps discovering new sides of herself that reflect in her work.

www.jikkelesterhuis.nl | @jikkelesterhuis

ARTIST STATEMENT

“We live in a complex and ever-changing society where an enormous amount of information comes in every day. With my work, I try to find my way through that data flow and pick up everyday absurdities that strike me along the way. I translate it into new stories, using different mediums such as animation, sound, and installations. I disclose different elements, political, social, or cultural that you could hold responsible for the creation of our worldview.

I am fascinated with the metaphysical universe and the many layers of the world. All realities are stories, but the ones we share endure. How we look at nature and try to make sense of the universe is linked with how we perceive reality. We do not see reality; we see a story our brain created for us.

In my work, I escape the boundaries of the physical world and create a new reality. I aim to stimulate the senses that can best receive the story, which is different in every narration. Therefore, my work is multidisciplinary. In doing so, I try to create an alternate reality that resembles our own in its natural integration of all the senses. The prior advantage of this alternate reality is that I can direct it with much more control than daily realities in the physical world. I like to explore the boundaries between what is real and what is not. My aim is to expose invisible phenomena that mark the world into something tangible and open dialogues on these topics.

My work reflects the world around me from my perspective. Parallel to the changing world, my interests also change. I am currently experimenting with video installations.

Because of this, I try to pull a 2D medium into a new dimension and pull it closer to the physical world. My work is related to the world around us, my own reality, and a lot of fantasies and strange figments of my imagination. It is a little peek into my world, in which I hope to inspire people and open doors to nooks and crannies in 'reality' that they had not yet discovered (in themselves).”

— Jikke Lesterhuis

INTERVIEW

Let's talk about yourself first. Why are you an artist, and how did you become one?

I find this question a bit difficult. I don't really see it as a job or profession; it is just something I have to do. A very strong need in me, which I cannot clearly put into words, drives me to make things. If I'm not making things, I'm thinking about making things. It's an obsession beyond my control that takes over my body and mind. This obsession has always been there, but it hasn't always had the space it needs.
After dabbling in several courses, I eventually obtained my bachelor's degree in Cultural Heritage, specializing in exhibition design. However, my urge to make things turned out to be stronger than my degree, so I decided to give myself permission to be totally open to that need. 
It feels like a huge liberation to no longer suppress this feeling and to be able to let my ideas run free. I am super happy and grateful that I can do what I love doing most every day.  

You work primarily with illustration and animation but also experiment with sound, field recordings, and performance art. How would you define yourself as an artist?

Oh! I'm afraid this question is impossible for me to answer. My process usually starts with a certain story or subject that I want to do something with, and then the form will follow. I am convinced that every project requires a different form, and therefore I work with multiple mediums. Last summer, for example, I made a drawing of the beach in the Netherlands on one of the hottest days of the year. This creates hilarious scenes in the Netherlands because all the dutchies gather on our stamp size beach, but the hidden message behind this drawing is a pointer to less pleasant topics such as overpopulation and global warming. This illustration was left untouched for a while, until it suddenly occurred to me that a kite would be the appropriate destination for this work. I started researching what the kite is actually intended for and where it comes from. I found out that the kite is much more than a (children's) toy. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources describe kites used for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communications for military operations. They were also used in religious ceremonies to send prayers to the gods. There is a lot of symbolism and history in this fragile object. I also like that the kite is completely absorbed in the rhythm of nature. The kite and its symbolism reinforce the illustration and something completely new. Starting from there, I developed an obsession for kites, and I'm now working on a kite installation.  
That's basically how most of my projects go. It starts with an observation or something that intrigues me, and when I get the hang of the story, the form will follow. I could best define my process and myself as someone who unleashes creativity and ideas on different mediums and, therefore, always comes into contact with new forms. The fact that I now work with kites does not make me a kite maker (if that is a thing at all). I'm still just Jikke. Honestly, I don't care much about those titles. I just make things that feel good at that moment, and this can be something different every day. 

Do you find that these different mediums are somehow connected in your work? Or do you use them separately to express different ideas? 

In my work, I escape the boundaries of the physical world and can create any reality. I aim to stimulate the senses that can best receive the story, which is different in every narration. Therefore, my work is multidisciplinary. Because I use different mediums, it sometimes feels like I'm working on a thousand separate projects. I often get lost in my own ideas and feel like I'm strangled in a tangle of loose ends. But then, all of a sudden, somehow, those loose ends will find each other, connect, and everything suddenly makes sense. Sometimes it even feels a bit magical when two things come together that fit so well.
This happened, for example, with my project in Japan. I started capturing the environment by making field recordings. This was just a separate project that I wanted to try out. My main project was animation and the sound was not necessarily meant for the animation. But when I put the sound over the animation just to see what would happen, there turned out to be sounds that responded precisely to movements in the animation as if it was always meant to be like that. And it's those little moments, when in some incomprehensible, almost otherworldly way, two of those loose ends find each other.

What messages are you trying to communicate with your art? And what do you think differentiates your approach from others?

Life is absurd, and my work is my way of giving it some kind of meaning, at least for myself. I have, as it were, developed my own language with which I can express myself. The most important thing in my work is that it always comes from an inner drive that I feel. I myself don't even understand where it comes from.
We live in a complex and ever-changing society where an enormous amount of information comes in every day. Through my work, I try to find my way through that data flow and pick up everyday absurdities along the way that strike me. I translate this into new stories. Often there are little hidden jokes in my work. I think humor is a powerful way to open dialogue on certain topics. 
My work is about everything that takes place in the strange world we live in, people and nature, human (mis)behavior, and the systems and structures we have created. My work is a sort of visual representation of this process. Actually, it's about everything that can help me understand life, a process that started at my birth and will end on my last day. 

Your statement says your main interest is the "relationship between human identity and how we relate to the universe." How do you incorporate such themes into your work? And how do you translate it into art pieces? 

If you'd ask me, one of the most fascinating preoccupations in the world would be; who am I? It's so mysterious and elusive. I believe that all we do is ultimately come to grips with this grandest and most incomprehensible mystery. We are always looking for who we are, what we are, and why we are.
I find it very interesting and endearing to see how everyone deals with this in a different way. On the one hand, the people who seize power to regain control, and on the other, the docile who follow the rules without question and countless other ways in between these two extremes.
We create social rules by which we live, and by following them, they persist. These rules become systems, and the longer those systems exist, the more invisible they become. In the end, we don't even know why we follow certain rules, and we don't know where the rules come from, but 'it is what it is'. I think it's important to always ask myself the question: but why? I draw inspiration from these musings for my work. By working on my projects, I get to know myself better and better, but also my role in the world around me. I think the main reason for doing what I do will ultimately be to try and understand who the hell I am. 

Where do you draw your inspiration for your series? 

Everywhere. I can't really put my finger on where my inspiration comes from, but I actually think it's just my way of processing information. This is just how my brain works. I'm energetic and chaotic, and my head sometimes feels like an arcade where beeps and bleeps sound and lights flash all day long. To keep track of that chaos inside me, I always have notebooks with me that are full of fantasies, words, drawings, thoughts, or other things that I collect. I use these books as an archive of my thoughts. I've been doing this for a long time, and now I think I have filled about 50 books.
There are some themes that always find their way back to me. Movement is one of the most important ones. Movement is in sound, it is in language, actually, it is in everything. Movement and the tensions that are set in motion intrigue me. In addition to it being a source of inspiration, movement might be the common thread through my work. It is important that there is a certain cadence, both in my animations, but also in the texts I write, and the sounds I make. I find movement an exciting theme to work with. 

How has your art evolved over the years? And what inspired you to experiment?

For me, experimentation is a key value in my life. I am very nosy, I always have been, and because of that curiosity, I often ask myself the question, 'what would happen if I would do this or that…?', which in turn leads to experimentation. 
I think it's in my nature to experiment. Sometimes I can suddenly be intrigued by a certain material, and then I want to know everything about it and incorporate it into my work. Sometimes it's a technique I like to work with, and other times it's a theme or subject. 
It's easy and safe to stick to a medium in which you excel, but it's not really exciting. I think it's important for myself and my work to never settle for what feels comfortable. I try to push myself to a place where it feels just a little uncomfortable, and right there, that's where interesting things happen.
Many times, the best things happen during the process, the things I didn't plan beforehand. Actually, I just start working on a certain idea, and while I'm doing that, all of a sudden other ideas take over and create something new. This is the work that arises before it arrives at the preconceived work. The happy accidents, flares, mistakes, and experiments along the way that's almost always my better work.

Speaking of experimenting, do you have a series or project you have meant to tackle but still need to start? 

I have a myriad of ideas roaming around that I still have to start. Some ideas I implement right away, but some ideas are better if they float around in my head for a while. To me, ideas feel like little creatures living inside me. Those ideas are fed by the information that comes in through everything I perceive and experience. An idea needs time to develop itself. For some, it goes very quickly; for others much slower, but eventually, they will all find their way out. 
A project that has been roaming around in my head for a while now is a project about perceiving reality. The way we look at nature and how we try to make sense of the universe is linked with how we perceive reality. We do not see reality, we see a story our brain created for us. Our reality is created when expectation and sensation come together in our brains. The brain connects the dots between the data our senses collect. The senses are the mediators between the macrocosm and the microcosm, between man and the world. From this perspective, our body and senses are the bridge through which the outside world flows into us, and we flow into the outside world.
In this project, I want to create digital worlds as still lifes that give access to different realities and make it possible to compose a non-linear story. It will be an installation that oscillates between the physical and the virtual dimension, with the aim of showing that reality is not a static and predetermined story. I believe that it is the anomalies that can expose invisible but existing social systems and structures and that can actually bring about change. This idea is still growing in my head, but it won't be long before it comes out and can continue to develop in the physical world.

What about NFTs and digital art? Are you incorporating this medium in your production as well?

I am very interested in ever-evolving technologies. Also, on the artistic level, there is a lot possible due to digital developments, and I am not afraid of digitization. In my work, I make grateful use of newly available technologies.
I haven't delved into NFTs, and I'd like to keep it that way. Art is, therefore, extremely commodified, where anything and everything can be sold for a profit. I don't think this is the right domain for art. I'm not criticizing the people involved in this, but I want to keep my own work away from that. For me, it is important that art remains personal, or at least that the maker remains present in work. I think that when the most prominent focus of your work becomes selling it, you work from a different conviction than when you make something because you make it from that inner drive. This boils down to what I mentioned in the very first question. I don't see it as a job or profession but as part of myself, and I'd like to keep that as far away from capitalism as possible.

And lastly, what are your plans for the future? Do you have any exhibition or collaboration you want to share with our readers?

My main plan for the future is to encourage myself to keep experimenting. I am currently exploring 3d animation and installation. I am working towards a form in which I can combine digital work and a physical environment, which adds a kind of temporality to the work. That the work only exists in that place and time. I find the transience of life an interesting theme, and I would like to incorporate that into my next installation. In May 2023 I will have an artist residency in Iceland where I will try this out for the first time. I have access to a ceramics workshop, wood workshop, metal workshop, printing workshop, and obviously the enchanting nature of Iceland, so I have the perfect place to get started with this. In addition, I was recently informed that the animations I made in Japan are going to be exhibited at CICA, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, in South Korea in August and September 2023. Those are two things in the near future that I'm really looking forward to. But I like to keep the great future ahead of me as a surprise to myself because the unpredictability and the not-knowing create a fertile ground for my ideas.