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Martijn van Oorschot
Martijn
Martijn works as an advisor and artist. Since he was very young, his main drive has been his concern about inequality in the world and the violence of the haves. La condition humaine unfolds differently in every person who is thrown into our world. Is there anything we can do? Can we be held responsible? What do you do to contribute to the world?
He completed a four-year course in therapy and holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. Language has always interested him and he holds master’s degrees in Dutch Language and Artificial Intelligence.
Travelling all over the world as an ethnographer and meeting people is his passion. He observes closely how we live and work together. Reading is second nature to him. How happy can one be with a book in a café, somewhere in the world, tucked away in a corner with a cup of coffee, surrounded by people. Sharing these findings through teaching and advisory work comes naturally to him.
He learned from Bangladeshi activist Leena: “I am an activist because I act.” Since then, the question he has asked is: What are we going to do?
You can see Leena in the documentary Utsho, which he made about her and her work.
He has experience working as an anthropologist in developing and sustaining organizations as well as in conducting ethnographic research in Asia and South America. He is regarded as a master of thick description.
He works with individuals and groups.
Art
This website focuses on his advisory work. What follows is a brief introduction to his artwork.
Our world is a deep and fast, beautiful and empty place, with people concentrated in enormous cities. These cities are the most ingenious artefacts people have created. He questions what makes that 81% of all people want to live so close together. Remember Babylon. In his artwork, Martijn combines videos, photos and paintings. Layering is essential to all his work. He perceives our world as multiplicity, singularity, ambiguity and contingency. The singular point where everything implodes, explodes and converges is every human being. A black hole, we are unknown to ourselves and others, we are infinite as long as we live.
He displays his projects on various websites and publishes books and documentaries. The subjects he chooses are social, reflecting la condition humaine. For him, every image is a portrait of someone and can only be realized after genuinely meeting the person. The relationship he develops with his subject is the essence of his art, rather than the portrait or painting that results. This constantly creates a new relationship. A work is never finished.
Based in his studios in Amsterdam and Brazil and travelling around the world, Martijn portrays the unseen people and the unseen artefacts of the world. People like Drag Queens, Homeless, Children in backward situations and Elderly people. By exploring other possible definitions of the human beings and artefacts he portrays, he is creating a world beyond the known one and raising the question: How real is real? In Martijn’s works, it is not a question what his art means, but what effect it has on you as a participant in the never-ending process of dialogue, experiencing and creating our own world.
Since 2023 Martijn has been travelling throughout Asia and living there in different places to see and describe the effect of capitalism on our living world. A new book is in the making.
Some of his art and anthropological projects in Japan, Amsterdam, Brazil and Bangladesh can be found here.
Publishing house: Uitgeverij de Oplichterij
