Airco Caravan

E-mailadresmail@aircocaravan.com

Telefoon+31628225227

Websitewww.aircocaravan.com

Biografie BIOGRAPHY
Airco Caravan (b. Boven-Leeuwen, the Netherlands) earned a BA at HKU, Academy of Arts Utrecht, the Netherlands. After a career in advertising and graphic design, Caravan returned to art, studied silk screening at MK24 in Amsterdam, and oil painting at The Art Students League of New York.

Caravan has participated in international exhibitions like Every Woman Biennial in New York, Museum de Fundatie, MOTI Museum, Amsterdam Museum, MOYA Vienna, Arte Museum Korea, and Museum of Memory and Tolerance, Mexico City. Solo shows in Amsterdam and New York. Creator of attention-grabbing guerrilla art in the public domain, including an illegal 4ft bronze statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The artist was invited to artist residencies At ArtCrawl Harlem on Governors Island, NYC, De Torenkamer, Amsterdam, and Boeddha in de Linie, in solitude in a bunker. Her art was included in the collections of Amsterdam Museum, Museum Van Loon, Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, Westfries Museum, the Netherlands, Nobel Prize Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, LA, USA.

Caravan was the founder and curator of two Nasty Women Amsterdam fundraiser exhibitions and curator of several group shows in Amsterdam.

ARTIST STATEMENT
The first thing I had to buy when moving from Amsterdam to New York in 2022 was a spray can of Raid to get rid of the roaches. Unpleasant but very effective. This sparked the idea of a new body of work. As an activist and feminist artist, I want to create art contributing to a better world. And wouldn’t it be nice if we could spray away all nasty things in our society? Just like killing bugs? Also, would these products have changed history if available during colonization and wars? So I started creating these objects, a growing collection of almost 400. Bold, humorous, and colorful.

I digitally create the spray cans and bottles and execute them in various mediums, small and large: solid cast resin transparent spray bottles, laser-cut plexiglass with gemstones, labeled spray cans and bottles, prints on silk, and printed and woven wall tapestries.

These series build upon previous social justice series. Like oil paintings on cut-out panels and raw linen, questioning whitening products. And the Healing series made with band-aids in skin tones from white to black, which were hard to find before the BLM protests in 2020. As a feminist, I protested for abortion rights in cities around the US, and I made a statement in a solo show in the Netherlands where I used thousands of silicone fetuses, and hundreds of my own used birth control pill strips to question the ‘pro-life’ movement.

When I worked on a project about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had many insights about racism, white privilege, and inequality, and I want to bring this message across. Because, still, today, white people have to be educated.

I will continue creating disruptive and unexpected art to make people think. Because I believe that art can make a difference.