Pilar Mata Dupont & Erika Roux

Crisis Meeting (Lowland Melodies) by Pilar Mata Dupont and Erika Roux is a diptych featuring photographs linked to their video installation, Lowland Melodies, a Polder Western, portraying how the Netherlands faces rising seas. The diptych depicts the fallout of a fictional boardroom pitch by the marketing department of the Rijkswaterstaat. The scene is lit with the buttery golden glow of Hollands licht or “Dutch light.” The work questions national myths of the Netherlands as a country that has steadily expanded by reclaiming land from the North Sea over centuries. By highlighting complex infrastructures and power dynamics behind water (mis)management, Crisis Meeting (Lowland Melodies) examines the challenges of escaping an old system in the face of climate change.

Pilar Mata Dupont is a visual artist and filmmaker living and working in Rotterdam. She graduated from the Dutch Art Institute in 2016. She exhibited at RADIUS, Delft, Secession, Vienna, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and at the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul.

Erika Roux is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Amsterdam. She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Her work has been exhibited, amongst others, at RADIUS, Delft, A Tale of a Tub, Rotterdam, Tensta Kunsthall, Stockholm, and Beursschouwburg, Brussels.