Van Zwart naar Groen

A tactile exploration of land use, documenting Limburg’s “black” past and “green” present through photography and linoleum prints. The project allows viewers to sense the human traces in landscapes shaped by economic extraction.

In Limburg, the landscape holds a memory of extraction. Once a region defined by coal mining, the governmental effort "Van Zwart naar Groen" shifted the focus towards agriculture. I grew up near this landscape, sensing both its beauty and the forces that shaped it. The project Van Zwart naar Groen is a visual and tactile inquiry into how human intervention shapes land and the region’s identity.

This transformation demonstrates how the motif of exploitation persists throughout the region’s history in different forms. While most physical traces of mining in Limburg have disappeared, the ideology behind it – profit-driven land use – continues to shape the region’s identity. Mining coal and cultivating crops may seem to be entirely different types of land use, but they are both rooted in the extraction of natural resources for economic gain.

My visual research bridges Limburg’s "black" past and "green" present by exposing the traces left by mining and agriculture. I started photographing those traces in landscapes close to my hometown, but quickly realized that those photographs did not capture the texture or the destruction of the land. While the landscape itself is layered, carved, and physically altered, the photographs reduced my observations to a flat visual surface.

Therefore, I translated the photographs into linocuts and tactile linoleum prints. The cover of the book, engraved in linoleum, and the linoleum prints, made with modelling paste and acrylic paint, allow the viewer to physically experience the traces left in the landscape. By carving into the material, I repeat the gesture of excavation. The process mirrors the acts of extraction that shaped the region. So, the work asks the viewer not only to look at the landscape, but to sense it through touch and physical engagement.

The project is currently expanding beyond the format of the book. I am developing large-scale linocuts, wood cuts, and tactile prints of up to 1 × 2 meters, shifting from page-based prints to wall-mounted works. The increased scale changes the physical relationship between viewer and work, making the depiction of traces more spatial and physical.

Ultimately, Van Zwart naar Groen questions how landscapes are shaped and how systems of exploitation persist even when resource use is labelled ‘green’. The project proposes a photographic language that moves beyond observation – one that becomes tactile, physical, and critically engaged with the subject it represents.