Moving Through Secondhand Sources (p.s.) starts from the complex and intrigueing life of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker (1933-1965). Hendrikse uses Jonker’s politicized character as a vehicle for his investigation of the interlaced vectors of history, biography and mythology. His research is shown in this exhibition and a book, which will be released and presented by Onomatopee in issues during this exhibition period.

Moving Through Secondhand Sources (p.s.) starts from the complex and intrigueing life of the South African poet Ingrid Jonker (1933-1965). Hendrikse uses Jonker’s politicized character as a vehicle for his investigation of the interlaced vectors of history, biography and mythology. His research is shown in this exhibition and a book, which will be released and presented by Onomatopee in issues during this exhibition period.

Jonker published several important works in the fifties and sixties and became politically involved when her father, Abraham Jonker, as a member of the Nasionale party, became chairman of a board responsible for implying new censorship laws on publications and entertainment. Ingrid Jonker firmly opposed to these developments and attacked her father publicly. The years after she experienced difficulties publishing her work though she got published, amongst others, in Drum: a “black” magazine. In 1963 Rook en Oker (Smoke and Ochre) her second collection of poems was released and with this book she received the most important literary prize of South Africa. Only a few years later Jonker ended her life.

Jonker’s life and part of her work, show the complex political and social reality of South Africa in the sixties. After her sudden death, Jonker became a cult figure, but after the sixties she was forgotten. In the mid nineties Jonker gained new interest after Nelson Mandela read the poem “Die Kind” during his address at the opening of the first democratic parliament. In the next years, Jonker was embraced by different groups of South Africans, especially by the Afrikaners that were looking for icons from their troubled past.

Hendrikse searched in South African archives for more information about Jonker, but most of the texts available appeared to be released after her death and didn’t seem to give a truthful impression of her person. In recent years South African history is written and rewritten rapidly, and within this rapidly changing society Jonker became a character in movies, plays and books by others. Within these, parts of Jonkers highly mediated biography are often “forgotten” or simplified.

Hendrikse decided to create a work that starts at this point of friction. He invited four South African and a Dutch writer to write a contribution for a book that fictionalizes the story of Jonker five times. The writers received different sets of pictures of interiors where Jonker used to live, where she worked or other places of importance to her. For this Hendrikse collaborated with photographers David Southwood and Melanie Hofmann. The authors were asked to use these interiors as references for the story: as surroundings (or scenery) where the story takes place, or to use elements of the pictures to define their story or fictional character.

The presentation at Onomatopee will slowly change its form, starting off with a spatial arrangement that includes a number of works that Hendrikse created in the legacy of the South African writer. In the first phase of the exhibit, Hendrikse will create the “conditions” in which the several elements of the exhibition (presentation, discussion, works) will take place.

This scenery is of equal importance as the works themselves. Hendrikse adds elements that determine the space: functioning as artifacts’ but at the same time the elements can be used to frame other works within the presentation at a later stage, or to emphasize or undermine a yet to be added element or work.