Rothko Chapel

Feikes Huis & Sjaron Minailo

Netherlands

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Large wood cabinets appear like shop windows, resembling cells of light. Their interiors are gruesomely beautiful. Blurred people appear with carts full of luggage. Later, they are piled up to form a mountain of dead bodies. The sequence of images moves associatively between barbarism and poetry, heaven and hell, life and death. The starting point for this video installation, which features projections as well as small figures and objects, are Mark Rothko’s large-format oil paintings and Morton Feldman’s music, both of which orchestrate an abstract processing of the Holocaust, questioning what value art might have after this monstrosity.

The theatre of Feikes Huis, which is committed to object theatre, is guided by its artistic director, Pol Eggermont and collaborates with various artists from the fields of theatre, mime, dance, figure theatre and visual arts. Sjaron Minailo, the director and actor in the production Rothko Chapel, is the artistic director of the Minailo studio, a laboratory for experimental visual arts. In 2016 he received the creativity award for this production at the Lalka tez Czlowiek Festival.