Ewoud van Rijn (Netherlands) positions his work within, beyond, aside and in front of everyday reality. Its content is fuelled by the ever recurring discussion on the end of art, which is taken as a metaphor for today’s cultural and moral state of affairs. Currently his focus is on researching the cultural dimensions of Neo-Paganism, specifically Wicca or Modern Witchcraft. Stemming from the spiritual attitudes within early modernism, Wicca’s sampling of existing ‘traditions’ into a new religious phenomenon has many tangents with today’s artist practice. Through an output of text, images and performance, it puts forward challenging approaches to fundamental socio-cultural concepts such as time and history, nature and ecology, gender relations, spirituality and religion. Employing a wide range of media – from drawing to artists’ publications and from installation to performance – van Rijn’s research explores Neo-Paganism as an invented revivalist tradition based on rejected knowledge.
Courtesy of the artist and Taryn Ellis.