Iratxe Jaio + Klaas van Gorkum

Lexicon of Vanishing Words is a movie portrait of Iratxe Jaio’s father, who started having difficulties holding on to his memories. Iratxe combines digital video and super-8 film footage of her father as he revisits scenes from his past life with a little help from his grandchildren. In voice-over, we hear him read out passages from the reminder notes he keeps.

On Thursday 6 November, we will be in conversation with Hilary Orange, Senior Lecturer in Heritage of Swansea University, about the liminal space between contemporary art and archaeology. This will take place at the Corazón de María archaeological site inside the Bilbao Museum of Reproductions, during the inauguration of the CHAT Botxo conference (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory). After the discussion there will be a small cocktail on site.

To accommodate all visitors who were unable to attend the opening of the exhibition at Witte Rook due to the railway strike on that day, we are organising an artist talk next to the work on Sunday 22 June. Come and listen to the history and underlying motives of the installation Shadow Play. The exhibition will run until 13 July 2025.

Artist Talk | Sunday 22 June 2025
Time | 14:00
Location | StadsGalerij - Witte Rook
Address | Oude Vest 34, Breda

A tryptich on power relations, representation and the long shadow cast by history

Shadow Play is a three-channel video installation, and it is the artistic outcome of a two-year investigation into the copies of Diego Velázquez’s renowned painting The Surrender of Breda, and the semi-public spaces in which these copies can be found in the city. The point of departure for this project is the idea that the context determines the meaning of a work of art. While the original, housed in Madrid’s Prado Museum, celebrates the Spanish victory during the Siege of Breda, in the Stedelijk Museum Breda the painting’s portrayal of Dutch defeat is no obstacle to its role as a centrepiece in an exhibition celebrating the grandeur of the House of Oranje-Nassau. Meanwhile, in Breda's City Hall, the canvas serves daily as a backdrop for countless wedding photographs.

The video installation presents the various versions of the painting side by side, with a particular focus on the scenes that unfold around and in front of them. For instance, in the museum, conservators carefully hang Kees Maks’ 1903 canvas into place, while in the city hall, students from the St. Joost School of Art & Design stage a 1970s squatter protest in front of Fernando Coll’s 1931 copy. At the Prado, Dutch diplomats pose before the 1634 original, and at the military academy, military cadets stand to attention in front of André-Julien Prévost’s 1872 painting.

Artist Roel Meelkop composed a soundscape for the videos that accentuates or distorts the acoustics of the various filming locations, thereby emphasizing the distance between audience and the image.

Shadow Play blurs the lines between past and present, observer and observed, and invites new interpretations of Velázquez’s centuries-old tableau.