by Josée Thissen-Rojer

This whole month (February 2021), Restaurant & Café Gouverneur de Rouville in Otrobanda is hosting an exhibition featuring 6 artists. It’s a remarkable exhibition in a remarkable location, and the initiator, Bethyamin van Nieuwenhuizen, born in Venezuela, explains how it all came about.

Over the past few years, Bethyamin has slowly made the transition from a career in body painting to creating wall objects and participating in gallery exhibitions. In 2017, at the invitation of Kas di Kultura Kòrsou, which was still in existence at that time, Bethyamin creates an installation in Villa Maria, which has 2 visual art exhibitions going on. Bethyamin’s installation ties in with the group exhibition in Villa Maria “Tula, Historia Kompartí” (Tula, shared history), where visual artists tell the story of the slave revolt of 1795 through their artworks. The other exhibition is a solo exhibition by Martie Genger, “Stima Otro, bida di Martie Genger” (Love each other, the life of Martie Genger).

Bethyamin’s installation, entitled “In the name of…”, is in a separate room, and deals with the theme of pregnancy during slavery. She uses plaster torsos of pregnant women, and she highlights this theme by displaying the painted torsos and props. It’s the first time that Bethyamin has publicized her work in such a way.

In 2018, Bethyamin is part of the group exhibition in Gallery Alma Blou, ‘Yu di Kòrsou Uní’, also at the invitation of Kas di Kultura. In 2019, she becomes more well-known as a body painter through the Tumba festival when she paints the torso of Rocco, singer of the Aruban band Buleria, with a combination of the flags of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. Rocco wanted to highlight that the islands should be more united. In that same year, she also participates in the group exhibition at Landhuis Bloemhof, Renobashon (Renewal). This exhibition reflects on the 50 years after May 30, 1969. For this exhibition, she creates a wall object with a gold-colored plaster torso of a pregnant belly. She combines it with a live performance, during which she paints the belly of a pregnant woman. It’s a symbolic gesture of renewal and change, drawing attention to the positive changes that have been initiated after May 30.

Body painting, and the painting of pregnant womens’ bellies is something Bethyamin has been doing for 10 years. It’s done during the final stage of pregnancy as part of a photo shoot or baby shower. During those 10 years, she’s painted over 700 bellies. When the pandemic breaks out in 2020, this work comes to a grinding halt. Even after the lockdown, requests are only slowly coming in. Bethyamin starts looking for alternatives. She lived with her family in Venezuela and during those years, she would regularly take the ferry to Curaçao during the holidays. The beautiful views of Punda and Otrobanda as you arrive by ferry are therefore dear to her. She’s been living in Curaçao with her husband and children since 1993 and thinks it’s terrible that the city remains so empty and quiet after the lockdown. That’s why she approaches Downtown Management Organization with the request to set up exhibitions inside the empty stores. She hopes to attract people to the city this way, and to make the city livelier again, because this area is so near and dear to her heart.

In December 2020, DMO offers her one empty store in Hanchi Snoa, in which she can set up a temporary gallery together with some other artists. Besides Bethyamin, Merly Trappenberg, Hilma Koelman, Monique Harbers, Gwen Anderson, Pierre Rutten, and Jhomar Loaiza will exhibit their work. The gallery is open for four weekends and the group advertises through social media to attract visitors. The project is successful, and participants and visitors are enthusiastic, but after a month, she has to vacate the store.

Because she’s now shown that this concept works, and that effects are noticeable, she gets the opportunity through some of her connections to set up an exhibition in Restaurant & Café Gouverneur de Rouville. The same group of artists will exhibit together once more, with the addition of Marja Tucker.

The exhibition is titled “Le Tour des Arts” because Bethyamin is looking for multiple locations to exhibit works of art. In fact, her intention is for it to become a route through the city, where people can go from one location to another to see art.

Bethyamin sees the opportunities that exist to showcase the visual arts sector of Curaçao as a benefit for the tourism industry and for the economy. She knows from her own experience how well that works. Her in-laws had a house in Besse-sur-Issole, in France, for a long time. In the villages in the area, there are plenty of opportunities to visit artist studios and art galleries. It’s even part of the appeal of that municipality. Her vision is to create something like that in our city center.

“Especially during these times of the pandemic, we have to be creative and start collaborating more”, Bethyamin explains. This is also what she conveys in her works: a new life, a new beginning, a change, and a new chance. With her project Le Tour des Arts, she puts her words into action.

This post was made possible by the financial support of Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Caribisch Gebied.
Previously published in Amigoe, on February 9, 2021.

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