Levi Van Veluw
Levi van Veluw (born the Netherlands, 1985) currently lives and works in Arnhem, the Netherlands.
He received a BFA from the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts (Arnhem, the Netherlands) in 2007.
Van Veluw has won several awards including Portrait (1st), Self-Portrait (1st), and Photographer of the Year (Fine Art), Non-Professional, IPA International Photo Awards (Los Angles, USA) in 2007, and selection for the Akzo Nobel for Young Talent program, Akzo Nobel (the Netherlands) in 2007.
He has participated in major international arts festivals and biennales, including Experimenta Utopia Now, International Biennial of Media Art (Melbourne, Australia) in 2010, the Whitstable Biennale, (Whitstable, UK) in 2008, and the Media Art Festival (Leeuwarden, the Netherlands) in 2007.
Van Veluw had a solo exhibition at Ron Mandos (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) entitled “Landscapes” in 2008.
He has been included in group exhibitions at the Sao Paulo Museum of Image and Sound (Sao Paulo, Brazil) in 2012, Museum for Modern Art (Arnhem, the Netherlands) in 2011, and ARS Electronica Center, ARS Electronica (Linz, Austria) in 2009.
His work is included in the collection of the Carlo and Hugo Brown Collection (UK and the Netherlands), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (The Hague, the Netherlands), and the Museum of Modern Art (Arnhem, the Netherlands).
“My series Origin of the Beginning consists of photographs, installations and videos in which I draw from my childhood memories to thematically and narratively develop my own brand of self-portraiture.
Portrayed in this piece is a room with five people sitting at a table. These people are my father and mother, my brother and sister, as well as myself. The room is executed as a life-size installation (4 m x 2.5 m x 2.5 m) in which everything, including the family members themselves, is covered with 20,000 dark brown wooden blocks.
At first glance everyone is sitting peacefully at the table, the picture of a perfect family unit. Yet this group of figures is positioned in an abstract environment, unrecognizable and therefore far removed from reality. Dimly light and dark in colour the overriding tone of this work is claustrophobic and somber, exuding a sense of loneliness. The awkward silence and dark colour suggests a claustrophobic sense of underlying tensions and emotions. The endless repetition of wooden blocks represents my attempt to gain control of my own position within the familial structure.”