Resident #2 Aura Luz Melis - Hartje Sloterplas
Inside the exhibition installation In the Hartje Sloterplas resident Aura Luz Melis shows collages on textile, focusing on themes such as nature, biodiversity, culture and community. Melis is the second Van Eesteren Resident of 2023. As a resident and architect, she knows the Sloterplas, the landscape and the built world around it like no other.
Melis explains about this: It is a privilege to live near the Sloterplas and the surrounding park. A living body of water of this dimension, in the middle of an ever-changing urban area, is unprecedented. The park is best when you have the illusion of being far away from the city, surrounded by nature or on vacation in another country. The views, the sailing boats, the terrace at the small harbor, the paths in the woods, the vastness and the omnipresent silence. From an English landscape park to formal German rows of trees, the Sloterpark is a mosaic of different landscape styles that has evolved over time.
The ideology of Jakoba Mulder and Cornelis Eesteren is more relevant than ever: green as an integral part of the city, inclusive and accessible, a place to relax, good for both physical and mental health. All of this can even be enhanced by increasing the contrast between nature (closed) and recreation (open). Many open lawns lend themselves well to an enriching biodiverse approach. Indigenous herb-rich grassland, perennials and flower meadows can be a scenic staging to increase spatial tension and intimacy in the landscape so that not everything is visible at a glance. From an over-dimensioned field to more intimate places. A robust urban nature as a basis, bordered by green roads, where living areas are hidden from the green.
Aura Luz Melis visualizes opportunities for the Sloterplas, using collages of contrasting moments. The opportunities lie in the contrasts between a continuous, biodiverse, silent experience of nature and the culture of the neighboring community that has changed over time.
