Pilgrim discovering another world: A conversation between Paul Beumer and Merel van Tilburg

Merel van Tilburg: Your exhibition at Dürst Britt & Mayhew presents an overview of works from the past nine years. It is the first time that you will show works from different series together, so one important effect of this will be to see how the different works relate to each other. All of the works are textile-based; they are all related to your travels in Borneo (Malaysia), Madeira, Nigeria, India, Sri Lanka and  Taiwan; and they have a strong relationship to painting. The exhibition title, Pilgrim Discovering Another World, is derived from an engraving by Camille Flammarion (1888).  This image shows a day being ‘drawn open’ like a curtain, and a tiny figure crawling underneath the ‘curtain’, from night to day, or in other words, from one world into another world. The engraving holds a textile metaphor and an allusion to travelling. You are a travelling painter, literally and metaphorically: you once said that “a carefully  composed composition is able to transfer you to another world.” 

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