Marit Westerhuis · the ruins we leave behind
Marit Westerhuis - Megalith
From 9 April to 30 October 2022, the Groninger Museum presents MEGALITH, an exhibition by Dutch artist Marit Westerhuis.
Source: Groninger Museum · Image: Marit Westerhuis, "Megalith". Image via groningermuseum.nl
When the recent invasion of Ukraine and the fear of a possible nuclear war have heightened concerns about a civilisation-ending event, which in recent years only seemed threatened by the much slower climate change, the post-apocalyptic landscape posed by Dutch artist Marit Westerhuis (Winschoten, Netherlands, b.1992) seems more possible than ever, and her exhibition at the Groninger Museum eerily prescient.
In a press note, the Groninger Museum explains that “MEGALITH is a large postapocalyptic landscape that stimulates all the senses. Marit Westerhuis (…) conjures up a world where humans are no longer the most important life form on earth. The exhibition confronts us with the transience of existence. The monuments in the landscape refer to megaliths, large stones arranged by prehistoric humans at ritual sites; examples include the hunebedden in the Dutch province of Drenthe and Britain’s Stonehenge. Westerhuis appears to be asking us: Which future ruins will we leave behind? And how will we be the architects of our own destruction?“
“This inquisitive stance is typical of Westerhuis, whose work interrogates the relationship between human beings, myth and technology. Since the 18th century, technological revolutions have radically altered the relationship between human beings and the earth. New technologies made it easier to subject the earth to human desires, and the idea of humans as gods was born. But how tenable is this?”

Read the full article