Скачать или смотреть Courtesy of the Artist Roos van Geffen 2025

In the durational performance Courtesy of the Artist, the artist’s ten-year-old son sits on a circular, slowly revolving platform, surrounded by a mound of raw wheat stalks. He separates the wheat from the chaff, an act that evokes both biblical symbolism and agrarian labor.
The classical image of the artist; autonomous, free, fully devoted to her practice clashes with the realities of motherhood. An artist may surrender herself entirely to her work, but a mother must surrender herself entirely to her child: leaving her child alone at home is neglect, while bringing her child to the opening of the museum undermines her professional status. Courtesy of the Artist unsettles this impasse, confronting us with questions at once aesthetic, ethical, and economic: What constitutes true value? How might one navigate between artistic vocation, care work, and material necessity? What is the value of care itself, and who determines it? Where does the artwork end, and where does life begin?

At the conclusion of the performance, the artist bakes a loaf of bread from the wheat her son has separated, as an intimate gesture that transforms labor into sustenance, performance into ritual, and symbolic action into lived practice.

Camera and edit: Paul Brasspenning
Performer: Son of the artist
Photography: Ursa Prek
Location: TAC, EIndhoven
www.roosvangeffen.com