Especially for Another Story at Centraal Museum, leading artist Willem de Rooij has created an installation centered around paintings by Dirk Valkenburg.
Valkenburg (1675-1721) was one of the first Europeans to depict Indigenous and enslaved people on Surinamese plantations, while also painting hunting still lifes and portraits of Dutch elites. The breadth of his oeuvre makes it particularly relevant for research into colonial image production and the “white gaze”. In this installation, De Rooij displays 30 works in idiosyncratic combinations, inviting reflection on how these 18th-century Dutch elites used art to support and legitimise colonial ideology.
Willem de Rooij
Since the early 1990s, Willem de Rooij (1969) has created temporary installations in that explore the politics of representation through appropriation and collaboration. In 2005, he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale and has since exhibited in leading museums worldwide. A distinctive feature of his practice is the reuse and rearrangement of existing images and objects, often based on in-depth art-historical and cultural research. In doing so, he creates new meanings between diverse visual elements. Recent exhibitions include King Vulture (Akademie der Künste, Vienna) and Pierre Verger in Suriname (Portikus, Frankfurt). De Rooij teaches in Frankfurt, Berlin and Amsterdam and lectures internationally.
Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by the first comprehensive publication on Dirk Valkenburg's oeuvre: a catalogue raisonné developed in collaboration with the RKD - Netherlands Institute for Art History. This volume, edited by Willem de Rooij and Karwan Fatah-Black - historian and expert in Dutch colonial history, (Leiden University) - includes new essays by international scholars and thinkers from various disciplines, including art history, anthropology, postcolonial and queer studies.
Valkenburg is a partner project of Hartwig Art Foundation.
Visit as a member
Visit Valkenburg - Willem de Rooij, other exhibitions and activities as a Friend of the Museum, member of Club Centraal or Cirkel Centraal.
Image: Dirk Valkenburg. Study of Cashews, Maracujas, a Tropical Chicken Snake and an Ameiva Lizard from Suriname. 1706-1708, Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 48.5 cm. Quimper, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper
Installation view, Willem de Rooij, ‘Valkenburg’, 2025 Photo: Jens Ziehe