Portret by Zeus Hoenderop | Dutch spoken
Hans Overvliet | distant suffering
W.F.T. van Houtum
Since 2013, by means of the ongoing art-series distant suffering, the Dutch artist Hans Overvliet investigates the role of the media in their representation of (military) violence. This, in the context of themes as perception, memory and identity formation.
Overvliet uses a various range of media, symbols and codes, bringing together dichotomies like beauty and violence, refinement and brutality, the sublime and the vulgar.
As a reporter, Overvliet was an eyewitness to the events in the Middle East during the 1980s. Of course these experiences resonate in distant suffering. So, aspects of power, politics, exclusion, censorship and the connection between artist, artwork and viewer infiltrate his multifaceted conceptual oeuvre.