24-08-2016

Dutch Design Daily

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Hillie de Rooij www.hilliederooij.com

Hillie de Rooij

By 24-08-2016

One Week About Photography by Ahmed Polat

“I grew up with parents who supported my work and always gave honest feedback. But as a child I had to get used to the fact that they were always so critical.”

Hillie’s mother and father met at the Art Academy in Arnhem. Before that, Hillie’s mother lived in Kenya for 19 years. Hillie quite liked the idea of traveling, but an art training was not her favorite choice of study. “When I was a child, during the holidays in Barcelona we went to museums, while I actually wanted to go shopping and hang out on the Ramblas.”

But looking back on those years now, she is glad to have been able to grow up with these experiences. It was only during her preparatory training in Den Bosch that she got the feeling that the Art Academy might be a good option and she decided to pursue her studies at the KABK (Royal Academy) in The Hague. “I quite enjoyed my academic year and moved like a ping-pong ball through the department between applied and free work.”

When she graduated, she had the feeling that she had just started, so after a year she registered for the Master study at the St. Joost Academy in Breda. That’s where she created her project ‘Myopia’ as she looked back on her youth. In those days, she always had to insist that there were also stone houses and cars in Botswana and Namibia. In ‘Myopia’, she has recreated the Western views with their prejudiced ideas about Africa.

“Not everyone needs to understand it. As long as people just ask themselves ‘why’, then I think because of these kinds of prejudices.”