“Water is voor mij nooit zomaar water,” zegt Dindi. “Het is een metafoor voor transformatie, een spiegel voor mijn eigen zoektocht. Ik kan er controle aan overgeven en juist daar ontstaat vrijheid.”
The Dutch Fine art Photographer and Artist Dindi van der Hoek creates surreal water worlds. The images evoke confusion despite of its serene frozen state and stillness. In her photographic work she tries to create an inner landscape. In fact, dindi visualizes the duality of an inner paradox. The veil, the layering and the masks of human identity. Water is a very important part of her photographic work for over the past 25 years.
Tijdens het Landelijk Atelier Weekend is mijn werk te gast bij HAAKS, Ruimte voor Kunst aan de Parallelweg in Culemborg. Open van 13 – 17 uur op beide dagen op 9 & 10 Mei.
De toegang is gratis.
Landelijk Atelier Weekend 9 & 10 Mei
Fine Art fotografe Dindi van der Hoek creëert surrealistische waterwerelden. Het ensceneren en fotograferen van waterspiegelingen is een belangrijke basis van haar visuele beeldtaal. Zij is met haar werken te zien bij kunstruimte Haaks en exposeert daar als gast exposant tijdens deze atelier route. Dindi heeft een zeer herkenbare stijl ontwikkeld in de afgelopen 25 jaar dat zij werkzaam is als beeldend kunstenaar. Haar fotografisch werk is esthetisch, verontrustend en indringend. Als kijker wordt je deelgenoot van haar beelden die verwarrend en soms dualistisch kunnen zijn.
‘Psychisch exhibitionisme’ Met haar fotografische beelden neemt zij de kijker mee via een innerlijke wandeling door de psyche. Haar fascinatie voor waterspiegelingen en ‘de mens en haar identiteit’ is in al haar werken verrassend zichtbaar. Het pad gaat via innerlijke gelaagdheid langs maskers en identiteiten. Camouflages van de ware identiteit. Haar werk verteld over verhullen en onthullen via innerlijke tegenstrijdigheden, dualiteit en ontwarring. Haar werk is een visuele uitingsvorm van een innerlijk proces.
‘’Water’ Jarenlang werkte zij onderwater in een zwembad, maar sinds 2019 bouwde zij een waterbassin in haar studio en zette daarin haar experimenten voort. In deze nieuwe situatie creëerde zij nieuwe beelden die schoonheid schijnbaar moeiteloos combineren met een rafelige duisterheid. Dindi schildert met de pixel. Ze arrangeert alle facetten van het beeld: van het maken van kostuums, maskers en attributen tot het schminken van het model en de fotografie en de fotomontage. Als een digitale schilder bouwt zij zo haar eigen wereld. Een ding heeft ze niet in de hand en dat is het water.. Water leert haar de controle weer los te laten.
Kunstschouw 10 t/m 21 Juni
De 31e editie van de Kunstschouw in Zeeland waarbij heel Schouwen Duivenland omgetoverd word in een openbaar kunst evenement, vind plaats van 13 t/m 21 Juni 2026. Mijn werk zal te zien zijn bij Landgoed van Langeraad in Kerkwerve.
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Inner landscapes, beauty with a frayed darkness
Fine art Photographer Dindi van der Hoek is known for her unique and highly distinctive photographic water oeuvre. Photographing water reflections has become the main basis of her visual imagery. As a viewer, you become part of surreal images that generate a certain confusion and seem to come from another world. Dindi makes images that are partly photographed underwater.
For over 10 years she worked underwater in a swimming pool, but at the end of 2019 she built a water basin of glass in her studio and continued her experiments. In this new situation, she investigated the influence of ink and milk in water, creating new images that seemingly effortlessly combine beauty and tranquility with a frayed darkness. Although the end result is physically a two-dimensional image, the path that Dindi takes is one of many layers. Like a painter she builds her own imaginary world. She arranges all facets of the image: from making costumes, masks and attributes to bodypainting the model. One thing she cannot fully control is the water. The water teaches her to let go.
Nominatie Jacob Hartog prijs 2025, Pulchri Studio
Water Reflections in an illusionary World
‘With my surrealistic images I take the viewer on an “inner walk”; it is about identity and about masks, masks that people use to consciously or unconsciously cover their true identity. The water in my work reflects the apparent reality and the viewer can be taken on a journey through his own illusionary world, such as false identities, limited beliefs or belief systems. Water is the most honest metaphor for life itself. Uncontrollable, transparent and extremely flexible. Working with water has taught me so much in recent years and still does. Water says “Go with the Flow, be transparent, give me space and I’ll carry you”.
I have been experimenting with water for over 20 years and the impact of water in my work still surprises me. It is unpredictable, uncontrollable and indispensable! The water reflections in my work have become a literal mirror and a guide. It is about balance, taking up space and freedom, and above all about letting go of control. Because water is now given more space, my work has become much more playful and clear in recent years.’
Freedom & Surrender
Water sometimes tends to abstract forms within the figurative image, thereby giving the images a surreal and oily appearance. These new ‘uncontrollable’ shapes that water causes, free the image and help me to visualize normally invisible complex signals and capture them together in one image.
The desire to merge and balance manifests itself in many guises and always contains this paradox. It is precisely within that apparent being torn that completeness already exist. And this seemingly dual contradiction is precisely wherein it resides. It is within the inexplicable, balancing on the edge of insanity, discord and surrender, that in my opinion, lies the unity.
Within these imaginary worlds that I create, I try to capture and depict these perfectly sculpted inner landscapes into an outer form and image. And so a surrealistic biotope arises in which “the cruel and the beautiful” unite.
Pulchri blad 2025, interview
Art Academy
Dindi (1976) graduated in 1999 from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. She is represented by Sille Galerie in Oudewater and Pulchri Studio in The Hague. She is also the initiator of the artists’ collective ArtNomaden, with which she independently organizes exhibitions with a kindred group of artists from the Netherlands and Belgium. Her work has been exhibited and published nationally and internationally in recent years.
Artist Talk, PHOTO31
Live interview door Diana Bokje
Quote:
Clarissa Pinkola Estes : “In every woman another woman exists. An external creature and an internal being. One who lives in the upper world and one that lives in a world that is not so easy to identify. The external creature lives by daylight and can easily be detected.
But the internal being usually comes from far to the surface, often suddenly and vanishes equally quickly as it appears. The paradox of this female double nature is that these two women are separately one, but also coupled elements in the psyche that inter-connects in a thousand ways.”
