Marie Civikov

Marie Civikov’s work merges her grandmother’s written memoirs with archival photographs and bright interjections of dream-like images. Civikov’s grandmother was an indischwoman; born to a native Javanese mother named Painem and a Belgian father. The pastiche of visuals and text brings the past into the present, critically reflecting on the oftentimes privileged existence of indischpeople in the archipelago while bringing attention to current forms of colonial oppression. This series reflects on different aspects of the colonial economy: the import of colonially produced goods into the local economy (including Mauser rifles which are still used by the Israeli Occupation Forces on Palestinian soil today), the feudal systems of pay and usury on European-owned land, and the weighted use of the derogatory word koelie to describe informal and indentured physical labourers. The words used by Civikov’s grandmother illustrate colonial attitudes towards labour, and the alienation of native workers and peasants from the European bourgeois sensibility. Civikov’s artistic interpretation of her complicated family history represents the entanglements of the personal and the political. It carefully reveals the subtle ways in which social and economic class division permeate into perceptions of one's surroundings; urging a reflection on the ways these legacies continue to obscure the systems of oppression operating before our own eyes.

Exhibition view of Fortress of Forked Paths, curated by Àngels Miralda, part of Something Else IV, Darb Al Ahmar, Cairo, (Egypt), 2025 Two paintings are mounted as hanging banners displaying diary entries written by an East Indies Grandmother. Marie Civikov uses painting to explore her post-colonial heritage which comes both from the Netherlands and from the traces it has left of Dutch colonial roots in Eastern Europe and Indonesia. Civikov's own case is a unique glimpse into the stories that heritage can tell that are often left out of history or purposefully erased and forgotten including the history of the mixed families omitted from binary explanations of the colonial structure. In this project she uncovers the lived experiences of her grandmother, born to a Belgian settler father and an Indonesian mother, Civikov's ancestor records her quotidian experience of the events surrounding the colonial wars of Indonesia that would lead to the territory's independence. We see that world from her unique position as a child of colonial violence and conquest. Her diaries reveal the daily experiences of the colonial order and her perceived normality of social hierarchies, the stories are anecdotes that follow her family until their evacuation from Indonesia to the Netherlands in 1946. Civikov's use of layered materials and vivid color echo the fused styles of Dutch abstraction and Indonesian folkloric and revolutionary narrative painting. The works are made on factory-batik, a method of fabric printing that was developed in ancient practices on the island of Java and uses wax to seal pigment into cotton. Dutch-Indo European entrepreneurs developed the textile industry and shifted its production from traditional hand-crafted methods to an industrial scale for export, making fortunes from cheap local resources and the exploitation of Indonesian labour. Many of these factories were destroyed during the Indonesian war of independence.

Made during a residency at the Elias Canetti House in Ruse, hometown of my Bulgarian/Austrian ancestors, on whose archives this work is based, connected to stories of displacement in Gaza, 2024.

Based on a story about my Javanese great-grandmother Painem, told by my grandmother.

From the glossary Àngels Miralda wrote as part of a text and glossary for our exhibition at 'Being Embedded in Ulterior Layers': Ayam Ketawa. Is a breed of chicken originating in Indonesia. The name translates to “laughing chicken” due to its long crows that sound like human laughter. This type of chicken is seen as a symbol of courage and heroism. One of them is depicted on a painting by Marie Civikov and represents a family story from the Indonesian freedom fight for independence. Her grandmother Bertha recounted a story in Dutch which was translated to English by her great-aunt Marie: “The three-day war had started. We closed all of the shutters and windows and the front door. We figured the bullets would first have to penetrate those before they hit us. We put mattresses on the floor and during the shootings we would lie on those. There was plenty of food in the storage as well as a few free-range roosters and chickens. During breaks in the shootings we would prepare simple meals. On the second day, two armed guards entered the house - they were looking for men and arms. Uncle Franz had gone to stay elsewhere, but they searched the shelves. We stood by to make sure they would not steal our food as we needed this to sell and stay alive from the proceeds. They took one chicken and told us “this is your contribution to the freedom fight.” After that, Tante Mien sacrificed the rest of the chickens in case they came back to take more, at least we would have eaten them. We ate rice and fried chicken for the remaining days of war.”

performance and installation with Voin de Voin and Andrew Fremont-Smith, Ruimtevaart Den Haag

performance and installation in collaboration with Voin de Voin, Sofia City Art Gallery, Sofia (BG)

A cooperation/performance with Voin de Voin, bird suits, location pic, Sofia, 2017

Overzict solostand This Art Fair

Solo show at Structura Gallery, December 2022, Sofia