We live in a world that does not necessarily feel hopeful. Instead of succumbing to despair or utopian ideas about how we “must save the world,” I focus on what exists right now. I explore how we can look, think, and act differently within existing systems.​

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My name is Jelle Korevaar (1989), a visual artist from Sliedrecht. Since 2014, I have been creating kinetic installations: moving sculptures that bring social themes to life. My work is often inspired by nature, where the interdependence between sometimes completely different species forms the basis for the whole. I translate this principle into my work, using movement as a medium.​

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My early works centered on frustration—frustration with religious tensions, social exclusion, and political powerlessness. Now, I have chosen to no longer focus solely on what goes wrong, but rather to focus on what gives us hope. In my current work, I explore how we, as human beings, relate to one another—the place where, in my view, the divine resides.​

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In this divided world, I want to use my work to start a conversation about who we are and what we want to become. My fascination with life underwater is a major source of inspiration. Everything is interconnected; everything moves in unison. At the same time, as humans, we cause a great deal of destruction, even beneath the surface. Through my work, I strive to make visible what would otherwise remain invisible.​

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My installations are created in collaboration with people who face barriers with employment. Together, we breathe new life into discarded materials, such as recycled plastic. In this way, we transform both materials and human potential, and create space for voices that are often overlooked.​

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My work is an invitation to conversation: about who we are, where we stand, and how we can move forward together.

This essay, too, is an invitation to conversation. How do we move forward from the present moment, from what already exists? What art might be?​

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This is my quest for balance, a gesture of outreach to others on the path toward a shared future. Not based on dogma or judgment, but on curiosity, attentiveness, and hope.

 

Principal 1:

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It’s easy to feel despondent.

 

“As a child, I’m afraid of the dark

I’m a hero in the heat of battle

A fool who believes in miracles

Swimming against the tide of time

I always take on too much

And even if I don’t live up to my words

I’ll stand on the barricades

Until the end of my days”

 

Song by Petrus, Stef Bos

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It seems as though there is currently a frantic reaching back to the past in art, society, and thought. To times—both real and utopian—that were different from today, simpler and deeper at the same time, when there was less misery, less rationality, less pollution, and perhaps fewer people.​

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I, too, am a product of this era and this mindset. I, too, am inclined to long for the past, to wish certain developments away. But I refuse to actually take that step.​

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This is the world we live in; this is what we have to work with.  ​

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As a creator, I admire artists like Christiaan Zwanikken, Theo Janssen, and Piet Mondriaan. I used to look at their work and creative process often and think: that’s how I’m going to do it, too.​

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The way  Zwanikken, Janssen, and Mondriaan worked gave me a framework on which to hang what I created myself. But metaphorically speaking, my kinetic art and I were moving in only one direction: inward, into myself, back. It was a closed process, impenetrable and unresponsive.​

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If I understood what I wanted to say, that was enough. If the outside world didn’t quite get it, I hardly felt that was my responsibility—yet at the same time, I wanted so badly for something to change out there that I felt bad if I wasn’t making a difference.

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It did not do my art any good, nor my mental state. What were my words and images worth?

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It felt as though I was deeply engaged with society. But looking back, I mostly see self-portraits. I see an artist who sometimes hid things, who deliberately wanted to make his work elusive. I see a creator working on a sculpture in a shed, purely because that sculpture had to be made—nothing else mattered.

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It is a story in which I do play a role, but I do not really matter that much. A story not rooted in lofty, insular autonomy, but in collectivity, openness, and hope.

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That story goes like this: art should be as accessible as possible—both the making of it and the thinking about it. The artist is not an independently operating genius; no, art is made together, just like society, just like the world. The best results are accessible, democratic, fluid, full of open ends and never definitive.

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What is art worth if others are not there? What greater compliment could there be for an artist than for others to want to find meaning in your work? I may often be the starting point, but I am not the point of departure, let alone the endpoint.

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As an artist, as an individual, as a human being, I may not even exist. I exist only in relation to others.

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It does not mean I am running away. I do not want to deny what is happening in the world. But just because you cannot go back to the past does not mean only pessimism remains. You do not have to resign yourself to the status quo, no matter how dark it may be. In fact, I refuse to do so.

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It would be nice if we did not live in an individualistic society, but that is the reality. It would also be fantastic if the mountain of plastic waste did not exist, but it unfortunately does.

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This is the reality. How do we move forward from here?

 

Principal 2

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Everything is already here

 

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”

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Psalm 150

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“Breathe in.

Breathe out.

I’m loved.

I’m alive.”

 

Unlovable (Lost Son), Worthwhile

 

Christianity has had a profound influence on who I am and what I create. It still does. But within that, I was always taught that as an artist, you cannot just be frivolous. You have to make a statement, say something about the state of the world, add something. All my works had to contain a message—almost like sermons. Beauty alone simply could not be enough.

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I have since come to reconsider that. Not because I no longer want my work to convey anything. But forcing depth undermines the craft of art. If the message overtakes the work, why does the work even matter?

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Everything that has been created has meaning. Everything that has been made has depth.

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Everything we create says something about who we are.

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Psalm 150 contains a passage I try to remember time and again:

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“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

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It is an important phrase to me for several reasons. But above all, the idea that simply by breathing, by living, you honor something or someone who created the world, proves to me that what exists is enough.

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Living together, changing, believing in something higher—all these dynamics are so grand precisely because they start so small, and are rooted in what already exists.

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Why do we make things so complicated for ourselves? All the moving machines we have could break down; everything produced in the modern age requires regular maintenance. In an age of constant novelty and endless innovation, as an artist you seem to have no choice but to keep going bigger and bigger to keep capturing attention. You have to keep astonishing people, with more, more, more. Different! New! Lots!

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But why? Everything we need is already here.

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Beauty and meaning often lie in the discarded. And it is precisely by working with that discarded material that you discover how much movement there is in systems that seem unyielding.

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Compacting waste material is an impossible goal—yet I set out to do it, despite all the objections. Running a social workshop to give a place to people whom society views as “wasted potential” is also a complicated process—but it can be done. There is energy and strength in creating something together from what already exists, something we as a collective can be proud of.

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Whereas I first used to look for grand solutions to problems that arose within my own small space, I now look for ways to do something for society within that same small space.

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That is how I discovered that impossibilities so often hold so many possibilities, as long as you take small steps, persevere, and refuse to give up—time and time again.

 

Principal 3

 

Hope is a choice

 

“When the earth embraces us, then I know

when the sky covers us, then I know”

 

I know, At The Close of Everyday

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“There never was much hope.

Just a fool’s hope.’

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Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings

 

Frustration is a poor motivator. Anger provides direction, but leaves no room for dialogue. That is why I am now making a radical choice for hope.

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Having hope is not denying the dark, gloomy sides of life. It is not a naive, fictional clinging to a dream image, but searching for possibilities, and continuing to do so, even when nothing is certain. Hope breaks everything open, and asks you to work with what presents itself, in the now.

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I admire artists who engage with menace, who create works that are both aesthetically striking and hard-hitting, with vision.

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I admire musicians who pull themselves right through the misery and manage to create something light even there.

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I find a lot of hope in life underwater. There’s something magical about a place where we do not belong at all, yet which at the same time seems to hold a mirror up to how we function as a society. Deep in the sea, so many powerful mechanisms are at work—so mysterious, fragile, and essential.

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Take mussels: I discovered that all the mussels in the North Sea filter everything in just two weeks. Those countless clacking mouths are here on Earth to let all the dirt, shit, and plastic pass through them. It’s a filthy job, but indispensable for keeping the sea healthy.

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That’s exactly how I view the social debate: you can try to shut all the filthy mouths, but then the environment just becomes more toxic. So what is the right way to go about it?

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In the work *Zeegras*, we explore a similar dynamic. A single tuft of seagrass doesn’t mean much, but one hectare of it stores as much CO₂ as two hectares of rainforest. Moreover, it grows at an absurdly rapid rate. Its movement is like a dance—hypnotic, repetitive, self-regenerating—that doesn’t refer to itself, but to the swell of the sea, the system surrounding it.

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I can’t help but see a parallel there as well: as individuals, we may not be able to change much, but when we move together as our own little selves, it reminds us that we, too, are part of a whole that points to something greater than ourselves alone.

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The sea is such a beautiful wilderness, such a well-functioning system, so full of hope.

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It brings me peace to realize that my images no longer need to change the world. That I do not have to do it alone, or that I at least do not have to. That everything I need is already here.​