Rubber Time I

‘Rubber Time I’ was made at Lunagangga, a former rubber plantation in Sri Lanka on the plot of the well-known architect, Jeffrey Bawa. Being Dutch, I realized that the land connected The Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Indonesia to colonial history and its exploitations. For the first work in what became a two-part series (I made ‘Rubber Time II’ later in the same year in Indonesia), three people lay on the ground in amongst rubber trees at the plantation whilst covered by veils consisting of rubber tree seed cases, smoked rubber and dried pored rubber. They seemed to have been lying there forever, somewhere in between sleeping, praying and being dead.