#5: When Reading One Thing Leads To Another, a Gallery in Mexico City and a Zine
A novel from 1955, a contemporary artist from Sudan, and some affordable art prints
Ten Thousand Things
I like to think of books as the alternative internet rabbit hole. Often I read a book that through either subject or author leads me to another book, which was inspired by yet another, whose writer was influenced by another novel, etcetera. Before you know it you’ve added another 3 titles to your Want To Read list.
All this to say that a few years ago I read Wild by Sheryl Strayed, which I loved and very much recommend, leading me to another book. Wild is hardly a Geheimtip, it is a bestseller. But one particular thing in the story drew my attention (nerdy emoticon). The protagonist has to pack extremely lightly for her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail, but she does decide to take one book with her. About this book, she writes: "Each of Dermoût’s sentences came at me like a soft knowing dagger, depicting a far-off land that felt to me like the blood of all the places I used to love.”
The title of the book she takes with her is ‘The Ten Thousand Things’ and since I had never heard of it, I looked it up. It turned out to be from 1955, takes place on the Maluku Islands, and was originally published as De Tienduizend Dingen by a Dutch writer called Maria Dermoût. Huh? I like to think of myself as pretty ‘in the know’ when it comes to (Dutch) literature. Yet somehow I had never heard of either the author or the novel.
So I entered the rabbit hole.
First stop: Boekwinkeltjes.nl, which, for my international readers, is a platform where people and businesses from Belgium and the Netherlands trade second-hand books. I found De Tienduizend Dingen in a beautiful old edition, saw the seller had two other novels by Dermoût as well, and bought all three of them (as you do).
Second stop: Wikipedia. Where I learned that Maria Dermoût was considered one of the greats of Dutch literature. She published her first novel when she was 63 (good for you, Maria!) and in December 1958, Time Magazine praised the translation of The Ten Thousand Things, and named it one of the best books of the year. The novel was translated into 13 languages.
Third stop: a website written by Maria’s granddaughter with info and photos on the life of the author.
Even though De Tienduizend Dingen is not the type and style of novel I usually like (I am not very much into historical and ‘small’ stories, and my edition was written in archaic language), I did love reading it. It is a depiction of a time and place so far removed from the way we live here and now and I appreciated the love for detail. If this novel had been written by a man, I bet I’d have heard of it in high school…
Anyway, the book is pretty slim and I noticed it’s been re-published recently, presumably making easier to read. I won’t link to Big Bezos dot com - but here for instance is a bookstore where you can purchase a current edition of the novel.
Onto art seen in Mexico!
On a very inspiring trip to Mexico City earlier this month I visited Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. Mariane champions trailblazing contemporary artists, predominantly from the African diaspora, and was showing an exhibit of Salah Elmur called The Land of the Sun.
The palette of greens, blues, and mustard yellow in these paintings particularly drew me. You can view the exhibit via this link and this 2-minute video with the artist also shows the paintings in close-up, which enables you to see the colours in a much better way than. I particularly love his Salahs use of a bright blue in the outlines of the faces.
Salah Elmur lives and paints in Egypt, but was born in Sudan. After a spell in prison for a cartoon that was too critical of the government, he left Sudan in the 1990s. According to the description of the artwork on the gallery website, ‘Elmur paints the same face in thousands of variations to create a nation, an emancipated people that must rebuild itself but finds itself trapped by the same power structures that once oppressed it’. I found it pretty powerful.
And one more thing
Look at this amazing zine I bought last weekend.
March & Rock is a self-published zine by Maarten Rots, and I wouldn’t be me if I wouldn’t link to somewhere you can buy art: Maarten not only makes zines, but he also sells incredible prints of his work for only 50 euros. Go treat yourself to some art!
Tell me what you bought in the comments, and I’ll see you in two weeks for the next one.