MYRTHE VAN DER MARK
the Netherlands, 22.12.1989
currently based in Brussels
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“W_ _H”, “SH_ _ER” and “S_ _P”
Skein
Solveigs’ fingers knead the fabric, rubbing in soap, mixing ointments, adding a blooming tincture, and patting balms and drops of solutions onto the cloth. “Out, damned spot” she murmurs. She feels she has been here before and now she’s here again. Before her mind's eye a sash of images unfurls, like a never-ending memory unspooling; another card on the mantlepiece, a figurine in a winding sheet, sea-buckthorn-orange stitching, a gesture towards hardened soil, a carved out hollow. Another vision swells, one of many shoes; graphic, ovoid, painterly and burlesque, marching along the mossy marches of her memory with their lacquered finishes in shades of black, white, and red. Some galloping, others trudging past without a sound, like a choir of silhouettes, rushing without terror.
Sleepdrunk, with her feet turning cold on the terracotta tiles, the early sun spills through the crevices. Solveig opens the sliding door just a sliding sliver, enough for her to shoehorn her face into the aperture. She examines the sky, a slate-grey wall paling at its edges. The lighter’s metronomic clicking, the squeaky drag of the cigarette’s end, her face still pressed into the opening, blowing out the smoke from between pursed lips. A gaggle of geese takes flight from between the reeds, becoming a skein once in the air, V-wedging southward. Her breath loosens, then tightens again in her chest.
The sweet scent of rice entices her back inside. Thistles stand suggestively in their vase on the countertop. The coffee churns in a vortex, its swirling black liquid refusing to settle. The rice is soaked, rinsed, and boiled, chestnuts are placed on top to steam together for a moment. Glancing across the kitchen, she still sees the ruffled feathers strewn around the floor. In growing anxiety she cries, “Out, damned spot!” Cerberus lifts his head. Another image intrudes; a votive wrought of chestnut-shaped stains on burgundy leather, morphing into flattened hot-pink chewing gum, spat with force onto the pavement.
Somewhere on the brink of intention and intuition, Solveig marches. Thin streams of icy air slide down the layers of shorn wool, cashmere, and silk, reaching for her throat. Nipples rising in their pinkness. Hunched forward against the lashings of wind, her entirety enveloped in a rainproof polyester shell. Cerberus trots by her side, curiously looking behind him to check if she is still following him, that she hasn’t vanished just yet. His hyena coat spangled with dew that breaks into prismatic freckles, stained glass scattered across his fur. Solveig believes that perhaps a dog is a way for us to like the world despite everything. Cerberus is an empathy machine on four legs, ordering the world for her by walking ten steps ahead like a moral snowplough. The shadows of his spindly legs lengthen as they pass various congregations of farm animals; chickens and ducks, young bulls, horses, rabbits, sheep, and a lone Kashmiri goat. On the pasture the horses move widdershins and kaleidoscopic; their legs wrap around each other, they swirl around their axis. Solveig’s somber eyes staring from under cow-licked eyebrows. Church bells draw nearer, affirming the morning in its unveiling.
A litany of people gathers in front of the train station one by one, adding their weight to Solveig’s shoulders. Chalk drawings appear across the pavement and square, leaving pastel dust resting on their tongues like a sort of omen. Exposed belly buttons, layers of lipgloss, large backpacks mounted on little people, chubby hands fingering long tubes containing crisps. Solveig buys a scratch card. What for? Trying her luck? A better omen? A girl eats grated cheese from a ziplock bag while walking, averting her gaze in embarrassment when their eyes meet. Another woman tips a paper cup towards her mouth; some liquid escapes, staining her coat’s collar with a growing shadow.
Cheek by jowl she wakes with Cerberus on the duvet. He innocently licks his paws clean of salt, getting rid of the mineral crust, rainbow dusting the sheets. Becoming undone, waking and walking from the dream inside the dream with a slumbering sense of good faith and the idea that a conspiracy prevents them all from remembering how they came into the world. She tries to wash back the deluge of images, to locate a single true symbol amid the glut. But her mind recoils at the excess. Meaning multiplies like spores. She longs to disappear, to be absorbed by the feathers, the stains, the momentum of the day.
Febe Lamiroy
Skein
Solveigs’ fingers knead the fabric, rubbing in soap, mixing ointments, adding a blooming tincture, and patting balms and drops of solutions onto the cloth. “Out, damned spot” she murmurs. She feels she has been here before and now she’s here again. Before her mind's eye a sash of images unfurls, like a never-ending memory unspooling; another card on the mantlepiece, a figurine in a winding sheet, sea-buckthorn-orange stitching, a gesture towards hardened soil, a carved out hollow. Another vision swells, one of many shoes; graphic, ovoid, painterly and burlesque, marching along the mossy marches of her memory with their lacquered finishes in shades of black, white, and red. Some galloping, others trudging past without a sound, like a choir of silhouettes, rushing without terror.
Sleepdrunk, with her feet turning cold on the terracotta tiles, the early sun spills through the crevices. Solveig opens the sliding door just a sliding sliver, enough for her to shoehorn her face into the aperture. She examines the sky, a slate-grey wall paling at its edges. The lighter’s metronomic clicking, the squeaky drag of the cigarette’s end, her face still pressed into the opening, blowing out the smoke from between pursed lips. A gaggle of geese takes flight from between the reeds, becoming a skein once in the air, V-wedging southward. Her breath loosens, then tightens again in her chest.
The sweet scent of rice entices her back inside. Thistles stand suggestively in their vase on the countertop. The coffee churns in a vortex, its swirling black liquid refusing to settle. The rice is soaked, rinsed, and boiled, chestnuts are placed on top to steam together for a moment. Glancing across the kitchen, she still sees the ruffled feathers strewn around the floor. In growing anxiety she cries, “Out, damned spot!” Cerberus lifts his head. Another image intrudes; a votive wrought of chestnut-shaped stains on burgundy leather, morphing into flattened hot-pink chewing gum, spat with force onto the pavement.
Somewhere on the brink of intention and intuition, Solveig marches. Thin streams of icy air slide down the layers of shorn wool, cashmere, and silk, reaching for her throat. Nipples rising in their pinkness. Hunched forward against the lashings of wind, her entirety enveloped in a rainproof polyester shell. Cerberus trots by her side, curiously looking behind him to check if she is still following him, that she hasn’t vanished just yet. His hyena coat spangled with dew that breaks into prismatic freckles, stained glass scattered across his fur. Solveig believes that perhaps a dog is a way for us to like the world despite everything. Cerberus is an empathy machine on four legs, ordering the world for her by walking ten steps ahead like a moral snowplough. The shadows of his spindly legs lengthen as they pass various congregations of farm animals; chickens and ducks, young bulls, horses, rabbits, sheep, and a lone Kashmiri goat. On the pasture the horses move widdershins and kaleidoscopic; their legs wrap around each other, they swirl around their axis. Solveig’s somber eyes staring from under cow-licked eyebrows. Church bells draw nearer, affirming the morning in its unveiling.
A litany of people gathers in front of the train station one by one, adding their weight to Solveig’s shoulders. Chalk drawings appear across the pavement and square, leaving pastel dust resting on their tongues like a sort of omen. Exposed belly buttons, layers of lipgloss, large backpacks mounted on little people, chubby hands fingering long tubes containing crisps. Solveig buys a scratch card. What for? Trying her luck? A better omen? A girl eats grated cheese from a ziplock bag while walking, averting her gaze in embarrassment when their eyes meet. Another woman tips a paper cup towards her mouth; some liquid escapes, staining her coat’s collar with a growing shadow.
Cheek by jowl she wakes with Cerberus on the duvet. He innocently licks his paws clean of salt, getting rid of the mineral crust, rainbow dusting the sheets. Becoming undone, waking and walking from the dream inside the dream with a slumbering sense of good faith and the idea that a conspiracy prevents them all from remembering how they came into the world. She tries to wash back the deluge of images, to locate a single true symbol amid the glut. But her mind recoils at the excess. Meaning multiplies like spores. She longs to disappear, to be absorbed by the feathers, the stains, the momentum of the day.
Febe Lamiroy
THE WATER HAS NO HAIR TO HOLD ONTO
2025, solo presentation, 6-9 pm
On October 26th, Avee presents the second iteration of a new body of work by Myrthe van der Mark, coinciding with the end of Daylight Saving Time and the finissage of Jonas Dehnen’s solo exhibition A Legato or Your Perfect Hair In The Bathroom Sink, Adorning, at Pizza Gallery. This day also marks the beginning of winter time, when the clocks go back one hour, giving us an extra hour at night.
The work on view at Pizza Gallery dovetails with pieces the artist recently exhibited during the third edition of Publiek Park at Plantentuin Meise. The transparent octagonal table, custom-made for her installation in the ornate octagonal Balat greenhouse, returns here. Originally, it served as a platform for four vases containing different preparations (salve, soap, infusion, and watercolour ) made from St. John’s Wort. This herb, traditionally harvested around the summer solstice, also marks the birthday of the artist’s late father and coincided with the opening of Publiek Park.
The currently presented sculptures, cast in clear epoxy resin inside four of the same overstock Serax vases sourced from Rotor Deconstruction, take inspiration from shokuhin sampuru (食品サンプル), the hyperreal food models found in Japanese restaurant displays. Each contains a different flavour of Cup-a-Soup, that were left unconsumed after the passing of the artist’s father. These urn-like vessels, that seem to mimic a human silhouette, act as containers for transformation: evoking preservation, transience, and the eternal. As the resin subtly expanded with temperature changes, the glass vases gradually cracked and bursted, the interior form pressing against its container until it broke free. In this moment, the sculptures shifted: from stillness to action, from vessel to ghost. A serene banquet of memento mori becomes a shrine to
impermanence and energy’s continual recomposition.
Rooted in the anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the artist reached out to the Steiner school in Brussels, aptly located on Sint-Janskruidlaan (St. John’s Wort Lane), to collaborate for Publiek Park. During the exhibition’s opening, children from the school sang solstice songs in several languages. Their recorded performance, titled Non nobis solum (“not for ourselves alone”), continued to echo through the greenhouse as the days grew shorter.
A new sound piece, 1:12:36, loops within the current installation. It is a compilation of New Year’s Eve recordings from 1994, 1995, and 1996, captured on home video and edited by the artist’s cousin. Set within the industrial shell of a former soap factory, the audio conjures familial voices and domestic warmth, marking the symbolic transition from old year to new. In its repetition, the piece mirrors the cyclical nature of time and echoes the themes of transformation and memory throughout the installation.
The works on view revisit and reconfigure the earlier installation: preserving its structure while offering new reflections on dualities, day and night, summer and winter, life and death. Together, they form a holistic narrative of continuity and change. As memory, matter, and site shift, the installation becomes a meditation on flux, care, and the passage of time.
Presented at Pizza Gallery, Ghent
2025, solo presentation, 6-9 pm
On October 26th, Avee presents the second iteration of a new body of work by Myrthe van der Mark, coinciding with the end of Daylight Saving Time and the finissage of Jonas Dehnen’s solo exhibition A Legato or Your Perfect Hair In The Bathroom Sink, Adorning, at Pizza Gallery. This day also marks the beginning of winter time, when the clocks go back one hour, giving us an extra hour at night.
The work on view at Pizza Gallery dovetails with pieces the artist recently exhibited during the third edition of Publiek Park at Plantentuin Meise. The transparent octagonal table, custom-made for her installation in the ornate octagonal Balat greenhouse, returns here. Originally, it served as a platform for four vases containing different preparations (salve, soap, infusion, and watercolour ) made from St. John’s Wort. This herb, traditionally harvested around the summer solstice, also marks the birthday of the artist’s late father and coincided with the opening of Publiek Park.
The currently presented sculptures, cast in clear epoxy resin inside four of the same overstock Serax vases sourced from Rotor Deconstruction, take inspiration from shokuhin sampuru (食品サンプル), the hyperreal food models found in Japanese restaurant displays. Each contains a different flavour of Cup-a-Soup, that were left unconsumed after the passing of the artist’s father. These urn-like vessels, that seem to mimic a human silhouette, act as containers for transformation: evoking preservation, transience, and the eternal. As the resin subtly expanded with temperature changes, the glass vases gradually cracked and bursted, the interior form pressing against its container until it broke free. In this moment, the sculptures shifted: from stillness to action, from vessel to ghost. A serene banquet of memento mori becomes a shrine to
impermanence and energy’s continual recomposition.
Rooted in the anthroposophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the artist reached out to the Steiner school in Brussels, aptly located on Sint-Janskruidlaan (St. John’s Wort Lane), to collaborate for Publiek Park. During the exhibition’s opening, children from the school sang solstice songs in several languages. Their recorded performance, titled Non nobis solum (“not for ourselves alone”), continued to echo through the greenhouse as the days grew shorter.
A new sound piece, 1:12:36, loops within the current installation. It is a compilation of New Year’s Eve recordings from 1994, 1995, and 1996, captured on home video and edited by the artist’s cousin. Set within the industrial shell of a former soap factory, the audio conjures familial voices and domestic warmth, marking the symbolic transition from old year to new. In its repetition, the piece mirrors the cyclical nature of time and echoes the themes of transformation and memory throughout the installation.
The works on view revisit and reconfigure the earlier installation: preserving its structure while offering new reflections on dualities, day and night, summer and winter, life and death. Together, they form a holistic narrative of continuity and change. As memory, matter, and site shift, the installation becomes a meditation on flux, care, and the passage of time.
Presented at Pizza Gallery, Ghent
Sein Vater ist die Sonne, und seine Mutter ist der Mond. Der Wind trug es in seinem Bauche, und seine Amme ist die Erde, 2025
Series of four St. John’s Wort preparations, vase in glass by Serax found at Rotor Deconstruction
her phone reading: the moon in June falls mainly on the spoon, 2025
WALA Solum Öl, Hermès Terre d’Hermès
not for ourselves alone, 2025
Audio, recordings of St. John's songs sung by children from the Steiner School in Brussels (Sint-Janskruidlaan) are played through speakers
Presented at Publiek Park 2025
Plantentuin Meise (BE)
Series of four St. John’s Wort preparations, vase in glass by Serax found at Rotor Deconstruction
her phone reading: the moon in June falls mainly on the spoon, 2025
WALA Solum Öl, Hermès Terre d’Hermès
not for ourselves alone, 2025
Audio, recordings of St. John's songs sung by children from the Steiner School in Brussels (Sint-Janskruidlaan) are played through speakers
Presented at Publiek Park 2025
Plantentuin Meise (BE)
Myrthe van der Mark’s installation unfolds within the historic Victoria Greenhouse, or Balatkas – one of the most emblematic structures of the Meise Botanic Garden. Designed in 1854 by Alphonse Balat, court architect to Leopold II, the ornate octagonal glasshouse was originally built for the Brussels zoo. In 1878, it was relocated to the Jardin Botanique to cultivate Victoria amazonica, the giant tropical water lily sustained by a heated basin. Since 1941, the greenhouse has stood in Meise as a testament to nineteenth-century botanical architecture.
Myrthe van der Mark’s installation draws on hermetic traditions and the anthroposophic teachings of Rudolf Steiner – principles she was raised with as a child. Publiek Park opens during a symbolic moment: the birthday of her late father and the week of Saint John’s Eve, a solstice celebration associated with purification and transition. Marking both the birth and name day of John the Baptist, it is a time when light and warmth reaches its peak on one of the longest days of the year.
An octagonal plexiglass platform, mirroring the dimensions of the crown window above, presents four preparations of Saint John’s Wort, a healing plant that thrives in the medicinal garden beside the Balatkas. Salve, soap, infusion, and watercolour – distilled by the artist from her own harvest – are contained in anthropomorphic vases, prepared with beeswax and honey from the Plantentuin’s beekeeper. These four vessels serve as evocations of the installation’s title. Its father is the Sun, its mother the Moon. The Wind carried it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth is a central passage from the Tabula Smaragdina, a foundational alchemical text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus which deeply influenced Steiner’s cosmology. In the medieval garden of the Plantentuin, Van der Mark planted eight Saint John’s Wort plants in an octagonal formation, encircling four myrtle shrubs at the center as an echo to this installation.
Saint John’s Eve, central in Steiner education, is a festive gathering of music, bonfires, and flower wreaths, marking the school year’s end. For this work, the artist collaborated with the children from the Steiner school in Brussels, aptly located on Saint John’s Wort Street, to sing solstice songs in multiple languages. Their recording, Non nobis solum (“not for ourselves alone”), performed at the exhibition opening, now resonates continuously within the greenhouse as the days begin to shorten.
The windows are embalmed with Solum oil, used by the artist to anoint her father’s feet in his final days, and scented with Terre d’Hermès (Earth of Hermes). The Latin word "solum" means soil, but also translates to alone and sole. In botanical terms, it refers to the vital layer of earth that supports life. Solum oil is produced by the German company WALA. Deeply influenced by the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, its name stands for Wärme (Warmth), Asche (Ash), Licht (Light), and again Asche-a cyclical sequence evoking transformation. The perfume’s name alludes to Hermes, the Greek god of commerce and communication, who is also a figure of transition, as he moves freely between worlds. More than a messenger, he guides souls to the underworld. This crossing of thresholds – between child and parent, day and night, life and death, matter and soul – echoes through the work’s gestures of sound, scent, and presence.
Myrthe van der Mark’s installation draws on hermetic traditions and the anthroposophic teachings of Rudolf Steiner – principles she was raised with as a child. Publiek Park opens during a symbolic moment: the birthday of her late father and the week of Saint John’s Eve, a solstice celebration associated with purification and transition. Marking both the birth and name day of John the Baptist, it is a time when light and warmth reaches its peak on one of the longest days of the year.
An octagonal plexiglass platform, mirroring the dimensions of the crown window above, presents four preparations of Saint John’s Wort, a healing plant that thrives in the medicinal garden beside the Balatkas. Salve, soap, infusion, and watercolour – distilled by the artist from her own harvest – are contained in anthropomorphic vases, prepared with beeswax and honey from the Plantentuin’s beekeeper. These four vessels serve as evocations of the installation’s title. Its father is the Sun, its mother the Moon. The Wind carried it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth is a central passage from the Tabula Smaragdina, a foundational alchemical text attributed to Hermes Trismegistus which deeply influenced Steiner’s cosmology. In the medieval garden of the Plantentuin, Van der Mark planted eight Saint John’s Wort plants in an octagonal formation, encircling four myrtle shrubs at the center as an echo to this installation.
Saint John’s Eve, central in Steiner education, is a festive gathering of music, bonfires, and flower wreaths, marking the school year’s end. For this work, the artist collaborated with the children from the Steiner school in Brussels, aptly located on Saint John’s Wort Street, to sing solstice songs in multiple languages. Their recording, Non nobis solum (“not for ourselves alone”), performed at the exhibition opening, now resonates continuously within the greenhouse as the days begin to shorten.
The windows are embalmed with Solum oil, used by the artist to anoint her father’s feet in his final days, and scented with Terre d’Hermès (Earth of Hermes). The Latin word "solum" means soil, but also translates to alone and sole. In botanical terms, it refers to the vital layer of earth that supports life. Solum oil is produced by the German company WALA. Deeply influenced by the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, its name stands for Wärme (Warmth), Asche (Ash), Licht (Light), and again Asche-a cyclical sequence evoking transformation. The perfume’s name alludes to Hermes, the Greek god of commerce and communication, who is also a figure of transition, as he moves freely between worlds. More than a messenger, he guides souls to the underworld. This crossing of thresholds – between child and parent, day and night, life and death, matter and soul – echoes through the work’s gestures of sound, scent, and presence.
HARVESTING BULBS. GROWTH OF THE SOIL. JUST BE WATER, MY FRIEND. [PENSIVE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC PLAYING]
2025, pile of Flexi disc edition SPACE AGE CRYSTALS, glass, plinth, lighting, carpet
For the IKOB – Feminist Art Prize, the artist presents a performance at the exhibition opening:
It, it is usual to add rose which is four rows. It is usual to add it. (2024–25). Taking place in the museum’s storage room, which is usually closed to visitors, the performance explores the symbolism of braids, the colors of mourning and its accompanying scents, flower arrangements, architectural clothing, accessories, tableware, and small, elaborate hair works. A landscape, a portrait, a still life. It, it is usual to add rose which is four rows. It is usual to add it. was commissioned by de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, and is a collaboration with the musician Joachim Badenhorst.
In the exhibition, van der Mark presents a sculptural element titled Harvesting bulbs. Growth of the soil. Just be water, my friend. [pensive orchestral music playing] (2025). It contains a stack of her Flexi disc edition SPACE AGE CRYSTALS (2022). The Flexi disc is a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet and deteriorates when played for an extended time. The Flexis on display at IKOB contain recordings of van der Mark’s father’s last days, reworked into music by Joachim Badenhorst.
During her performance, van der Mark used airbrush blow pens to paint on envelopes that act as sleeves for the edition. These are available to purchase in the bookshop, each accompanied by one Flexi disc presented in the exhibition.
Price: €15
©️ IKOB - Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Credits: Lola Pertsowsky
Presented at IKOB - Museum of Contemporary Art, Eupen (BE)
2025, pile of Flexi disc edition SPACE AGE CRYSTALS, glass, plinth, lighting, carpet
For the IKOB – Feminist Art Prize, the artist presents a performance at the exhibition opening:
It, it is usual to add rose which is four rows. It is usual to add it. (2024–25). Taking place in the museum’s storage room, which is usually closed to visitors, the performance explores the symbolism of braids, the colors of mourning and its accompanying scents, flower arrangements, architectural clothing, accessories, tableware, and small, elaborate hair works. A landscape, a portrait, a still life. It, it is usual to add rose which is four rows. It is usual to add it. was commissioned by de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, and is a collaboration with the musician Joachim Badenhorst.
In the exhibition, van der Mark presents a sculptural element titled Harvesting bulbs. Growth of the soil. Just be water, my friend. [pensive orchestral music playing] (2025). It contains a stack of her Flexi disc edition SPACE AGE CRYSTALS (2022). The Flexi disc is a phonograph record made of a thin, flexible vinyl sheet and deteriorates when played for an extended time. The Flexis on display at IKOB contain recordings of van der Mark’s father’s last days, reworked into music by Joachim Badenhorst.
During her performance, van der Mark used airbrush blow pens to paint on envelopes that act as sleeves for the edition. These are available to purchase in the bookshop, each accompanied by one Flexi disc presented in the exhibition.
Price: €15
©️ IKOB - Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Credits: Lola Pertsowsky
Presented at IKOB - Museum of Contemporary Art, Eupen (BE)
