Tinkebell (1979 -) Flora Tata Metallica, particulate matter on canvas, 2021.
"For a year, Tinkebell regularly visited the dunes of Wijk aan Zee, right next to the controversial Tata Steel factory. Here she shoveled sand and collected flowers and plants: the basic material for Flora Tata Metallica. She then went through the sand with a magnet almost daily for hours on end to extract the fine and coarse dust from that factory. Painstaking work. But the truly troubling part of the process came afterwards, while blowing the huge amounts of black Tata dust over the flowers she draped on canvas. Inhaling the particulates that also float through the air in Wijk aan Zee gave Tinkebell regular headaches, nausea, dizziness and frequent nosebleeds. This is typical of the artist's working method: doing everything to tell a story that needs to be told without making any concessions. In Flora Tata Metallica, Tinkebell, with direct consequences for her own health, makes an extreme amount of harmful emissions painfully visible through the negative prints, made completely in Tata dust, of flora that still survive in the heavily polluted area around the factory."
