We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kasper Tromp a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kasper, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
I sat in the back seat of a crowded shared cab in Tehran, watching my phone nervously as the first meeting with my internship supervisor was coming up. It was mid-July, 37 degrees Celsius, and I had on the blazer I always wore to such occasions. I was sweating. More so than coming late, I was anxious about my appearance and whether I’d be able to connect to people in the local art scene.
In the Netherlands, I had always struggled finding my place among students at bars and parties in Leiden. I had felt as though I was the only introverted recluse in the city. Now I mainly wonder whether others like me fared any better, whether they found places that were more accommodating to their personalities, and friends with an understanding of a good time other than turning increasingly loud and incomprehensible as the evening progressed.
“Are you Kasper?”, the director asked me when I entered the art gallery. She believed in the value of experiencing art and diving head first into whatever was on display in Tehran at the time, as a means of familiarizing myself with the city. After a short introductory conversation, she called Rene Saheb, one of the artists with whom she worked. No more than ten minutes later, Rene arrived by car, ready to take me on a gallery tour through Tehran’s inner city. “Just send me your plans later”, the director said in response to my bewilderment. And on we went.
Looking back, this trip, and the many others that we undertook later on, has been greatly formative of my experience and understanding of Iranian art. It turned out to have many faces, from reiterations of old manuscript painting styles to postmodern subversions of the authority of tradition, to aesthetic reflections on living in a complex and diverse society. Many of the shades of gray in Iranian art became apparent to me during conversations with Rene while on the road. Artists who opposed the authoritarian rule of the Islamic Republican order did not necessarily oppose Islam, but engaged with old works of Islamic aesthetics and literature in order to explore alternative imaginations of society.
During our excursions, I met many people active in the Tehran art scene, many of whom shared contacts and further embedded me within the cultural warp and weft of the city within the first few days of my stay. Standing on the second floor of a stylish book store that doubled as a small exhibition space, I chuckled. I realized that “networking”, the thing I so loathed because it requires one to adopt a “pleasing” facade and to approach people as instruments to get “somewhere else”, was made more humane here, more automatic, part of everyday social life. In terms of contacts, I had achieved here in three days what I had not been able to achieve in three years in Leiden. I texted that exact phrase to family back home.
What a charity it was, those trips with Rene. She took time out her schedule to help me settle in this city. To help me understand what it meant to make art in Iran. This meant so much to me and my further career as an art historian, while for her it was a simple act of hospitality, potentially lost in the ocean of kindness that is life in Iran. Back home I always stayed in touch with Rene, and wrote multiple articles on her artistic practices. When she settled in the United States, she suggested me for a CanvasRebel interview.
Kasper, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always been into art and dreamed of being an artist since I was young. My teachers used to tell my parents that they suggested other activities for me than drawing. For me art was a way of discovering new worlds at the same time I imagined them. Later on I studied to become an art teacher, as it would lead to actual job prospects and had a constructive application in society. This study tested me in multiple skills, some of which I knew I had (art practice), one of which was completely absent (teaching) and one which I excelled in surprisingly, which was theory and writing.
I therefore decided to enroll for a study of Art History in Leiden, where Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme had recently introduced World Art Studies in the curriculum. I wanted to explore art in all of its global entanglements, but was first subjected to learning the rigors of academic practice. This admittedly made me feel like an artist among students. Science may seem like a very formal exercise to creatives, but once you get the hang of it, you will realize how crucial creative thought (and practice) actually is in providing new perspectives on art, and that your armchair will only get you so far. The field is where art is practiced and lived. You will find that art and its makers are no mere passive objects of study, as they had been during the nineteenth-century infancy of my discipline, but that they might speak back to researchers in surprising ways that challenge preconceived notions.
As an art historian combining an expertise in Islamic intellectual cultures and contemporary art in the MENA-region, I observe a persistent tendency among academics to explain artistic practice in, say Iran, in modernist, secular, nationalist and poststructuralist terms. When, however, you conduct fieldwork in Iran and speak to artists and curators, you will find that those perspectives often compete, blend or negotiate with readings that stem from Islamic mysticism, which challenge the hegemony of the (post)modern paradigm.
As an art historian, I’m often in-between perspectives and positions, trying to accommodate metaphysics in a discursive tradition that is essentially aversive to anything beyond the purely material. In the process I also balance between professional standards (my work must be academically sound), responsibility towards art communities (their perspectives should be represented) and political sensitivity (my writings should not compromise them, my publishers or myself). It’s all too easy to believe that, in the field, you’re a fly on the wall who’s in the business of enacting neutral and disinterested thought experiments. My observations are grounded in particular temporal, social and political formations, and in turn, my writings may affect them.
However, this agency remains a consideration in practicing my work and is not a motivator in itself. I do not hope or even pretend to change the world, but always feel more alive when passionately engaged with fragments of it. Perhaps I’m still that kid in primary school, a bit to himself but essentially curious towards his surroundings, who found the pen in addition to the pencil as a means of exploring them.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I always feel the most reward in the process. In my case, a project will develop from responding to a CFP (call for proposals) for say, an article, followed by a message of acceptance (or rejection, there are many of those as well), to conducting literature research and fieldwork, to finally publishing my writing. The most rewarding element is finding out that I’m barely even capable of responding to the particularly phrased call about a very particular subject, with which I might only have “affinity”, only to then completely submerge myself into all the particular objects, ideas and discussions, enabling me to make a creative contribution to that subject. It is to work oneself from an infant in that specific area, subject or theory, to mastering it on some level that feels incredibly satisfying. The publication is merely a crown on that work.
The creative process of navigating such unknown discursive lands is multilayered, from locking myself in my home for days just doing readings (what a bliss that can be) to going out into the world and find material and written sources, or even spoken accounts during studio visits (or during the Corona pandemic, with video calls). I don’t follow Thomas Kuhn in his imagery of science as puzzle solving, which would turn all of these different sources into pieces of a puzzle. After all, I don’t believe in a grand puzzle maker who fashioned a pre-fixed design. Moreover, all of the “pieces” I gather do not necessarily fit together, I simply brought them together to speak to one another temporarily (artist to researcher, theory to practice, objects with thought) so that they might illuminate some path forward in an ongoing discussion.
It’s a very dialectical way of learning, in which a field interlocutor’s account may cast new light upon an article I read earlier, or in which a yet unpublished artwork may undo or expand what was written about similar artworks. In this process, bits of information are swirling all around you, seemingly in the center of it all, but you’re not actually. You’re more like a temporary resident in foreign art worlds, collections of literature and discursive fields. Finally you re-emerge from them with a product, a writing, which in turn enters that swirl of information. The process, navigating the myriad of those swirls and the impulse this brings in terms of insights, experiences and social circle is what is by far the most rewarding for me.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I always go back and forth on this one. I feel a great deal of intrinsic motivation to conduct research and, as might become apparent from my previous answers, my creative endeavor is a means for me to remain interested and engaged with the world. That might be too selfish and ignoble a goal to even mention here. Artists have expressed that they were incredibly honored to have their works discussed in papers and some of them add those publications to their own cv as well. In that sense I do a tiny bit in having artists (re-)engage with their own oeuvre in interviews, connect them to specific academic communities of readers and strengthen their own profiles as published artists. It is something.
Having a goal is a problematic issue in academic circles. The standard view is that scientists should remain impartial in conducting their research. However, in university students learn to take a position. The days of objective analyses (determining factual data such as material, dimensions and year of production) are over, and the task at hand is to embed objects of art into greater “stories”, be they nationalist, post-colonial, feminist or others. The myriad of perspectives I learned in university and afterwards are never value-free and might actually connect to broader worldviews held by the researcher in question.
For example, I found that postcolonial theory might reveal a great deal about our collective preconceptions concerning cultural practices in the MENA-region, as well as about those practices themselves when MENA-artists are actually included in the discussion. In that light one might say that it is my observation that “Islamic art”, in both museum and academic practice, is generally accorded a lifespan between roughly 600-1800 CE, and it is my goal to examine where Islamic art has “gone” over the last 200 years. One might ask which historical events and ideologies have been foundational to its discursive “erasure”, whether Islam as a worldview, spiritual practice and intellectual tradition is truly absent in modern art, and whether a contemporary Islamic aesthetics is possible. Those might be the goals guiding my work.
On the other hand, I really enjoy the creative process. In this regard my view on having a goal might be comparable to Rene Saheb’s. She is always looking for new horizons, techniques and stories by which to make art, which explains the many international residency projects she undertook. However, in applying for a residency, she always has to specify her project, beforehand, which is absolutely impossible for her. She may never even have visited the country she applied for. How could she know what she will end up making?
I feel that academics active in the humanities struggle with the same issue. Budgets are low, positions are limited and competition is great. When we apply for a scholarship to conduct our research, it is generally not enough to come up with a solid open-ended plan. Committees demand a preliminary conclusion even though four years of research is yet to be undertaken. Sometimes I get the feeling like they would only grant money to you if you’re able to present a finished thesis. It is not, in other words, possible to survive in the academic world if you don’t have a clear view of the goals of your project. Against this institutional background, the freedom of the “creative journey” becomes corrupted by the neoliberal logic of accountability, reliable partnership and set targets.
Between all of these considerations, I have no clear goal in doing my work, although sometimes something reminiscent of a goal might temporarily shift into view, before vanishing again. Perhaps it is my motivation that keeps me afloat. I have a strong sense of belonging and happiness when I work on a new project. That might just be enough.
Kasper, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always been into art and dreamed of being an artist since I was young. My teachers used to tell my parents that they suggested other activities for me than drawing. For me art was a way of discovering new worlds at the same time I imagined them. Later on I studied to become an art teacher, as it would lead to actual job prospects and had a constructive application in society. This study tested me in multiple skills, some of which I knew I had (art practice), one of which was completely absent (teaching) and one which I excelled in surprisingly, which was theory and writing.
I therefore decided to enroll for a study of Art History in Leiden, where Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme had recently introduced World Art Studies in the curriculum. I wanted to explore art in all of its global entanglements, but was first subjected to learning the rigors of academic practice. This admittedly made me feel like an artist among students. Science may seem like a very formal exercise to creatives, but once you get the hang of it, you will realize how crucial creative thought (and practice) actually is in providing new perspectives on art, and that your armchair will only get you so far. The field is where art is practiced and lived. You will find that art and its makers are no mere passive objects of study, as they had been during the nineteenth-century infancy of my discipline, but that they might speak back to researchers in surprising ways that challenge preconceived notions.
As an art historian combining an expertise in Islamic intellectual cultures and contemporary art in the MENA-region, I observe a persistent tendency among academics to explain artistic practice in, say Iran, in modernist, secular, nationalist and poststructuralist terms. When, however, you conduct fieldwork in Iran and speak to artists and curators, you will find that those perspectives often compete, blend or negotiate with readings that stem from Islamic mysticism, which challenge the hegemony of the (post)modern paradigm.
As an art historian, I’m often in-between perspectives and positions, trying to accommodate metaphysics in a discursive tradition that is essentially aversive to anything beyond the purely material. In the process I also balance between professional standards (my work must be academically sound), responsibility towards art communities (their perspectives should be represented) and political sensitivity (my writings should not compromise them, my publishers or myself). It’s all too easy to believe that, in the field, you’re a fly on the wall who’s in the business of enacting neutral and disinterested thought experiments. My observations are grounded in particular temporal, social and political formations, and in turn, my writings may affect them.
However, this agency remains a consideration in practicing my work and is not a motivator in itself. I do not hope or even pretend to change the world, but always feel more alive when passionately engaged with fragments of it. Perhaps I’m still that kid in primary school, a bit to himself but essentially curious towards his surroundings, who found the pen in addition to the pencil as a means of exploring them.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I always feel the most reward in the process. In my case, a project will develop from responding to a CFP (call for proposals) for say, an article, followed by a message of acceptance (or rejection, there are many of those as well), to conducting literature research and fieldwork, to finally publishing my writing. The most rewarding element is finding out that I’m barely even capable of responding to the particularly phrased call about a very particular subject, with which I might only have “affinity”, only to then completely submerge myself into all the particular objects, ideas and discussions, enabling me to make a creative contribution to that subject. It is to work oneself from an infant in that specific area, subject or theory, to mastering it on some level that feels incredibly satisfying. The publication is merely a crown on that work.
The creative process of navigating such unknown discursive lands is multilayered, from locking myself in my home for days just doing readings (what a bliss that can be) to going out into the world and find material and written sources, or even spoken accounts during studio visits (or during the Corona pandemic, with video calls). I don’t follow Thomas Kuhn in his imagery of science as puzzle solving, which would turn all of these different sources into pieces of a puzzle. After all, I don’t believe in a grand puzzle maker who fashioned a pre-fixed design. Moreover, all of the “pieces” I gather do not necessarily fit together, I simply brought them together to speak to one another temporarily (artist to researcher, theory to practice, objects with thought) so that they might illuminate some path forward in an ongoing discussion.
It’s a very dialectical way of learning, in which a field interlocutor’s account may cast new light upon an article I read earlier, or in which a yet unpublished artwork may undo or expand what was written about similar artworks. In this process, bits of information are swirling all around you, seemingly in the center of it all, but you’re not actually. You’re more like a temporary resident in foreign art worlds, collections of literature and discursive fields. Finally you re-emerge from them with a product, a writing, which in turn enters that swirl of information. The process, navigating the myriad of those swirls and the impulse this brings in terms of insights, experiences and social circle is what is by far the most rewarding for me.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I always go back and forth on this one. I feel a great deal of intrinsic motivation to conduct research and, as might become apparent from my previous answers, my creative endeavor is a means for me to remain interested and engaged with the world. That might be too selfish and ignoble a goal to even mention here. Artists have expressed that they were incredibly honored to have their works discussed in papers and some of them add those publications to their own cv as well. In that sense I do a tiny bit in having artists (re-)engage with their own oeuvre in interviews, connect them to specific academic communities of readers and strengthen their own profiles as published artists. It is something.
Having a goal is a problematic issue in academic circles. The standard view is that scientists should remain impartial in conducting their research. However, in university students learn to take a position. The days of objective analyses (determining factual data such as material, dimensions and year of production) are over, and the task at hand is to embed objects of art into greater “stories”, be they nationalist, post-colonial, feminist or others. The myriad of perspectives I learned in university and afterwards are never value-free and might actually connect to broader worldviews held by the researcher in question.
For example, I found that postcolonial theory might reveal a great deal about our collective preconceptions concerning cultural practices in the MENA-region, as well as about those practices themselves when MENA-artists are actually included in the discussion. In that light one might say that it is my observation that “Islamic art”, in both museum and academic practice, is generally accorded a lifespan between roughly 600-1800 CE, and it is my goal to examine where Islamic art has “gone” over the last 200 years. One might ask which historical events and ideologies have been foundational to its discursive “erasure”, whether Islam as a worldview, spiritual practice and intellectual tradition is truly absent in modern art, and whether a contemporary Islamic aesthetics is possible. Those might be the goals guiding my work.
On the other hand, I really enjoy the creative process. In this regard my view on having a goal might be comparable to Rene Saheb’s. She is always looking for new horizons, techniques and stories by which to make art, which explains the many international residency projects she undertook. However, in applying for a residency, she always has to specify her project, beforehand, which is absolutely impossible for her. She may never even have visited the country she applied for. How could she know what she will end up making?
I feel that academics active in the humanities struggle with the same issue. Budgets are low, positions are limited and competition is great. When we apply for a scholarship to conduct our research, it is generally not enough to come up with a solid open-ended plan. Committees demand a preliminary conclusion even though four years of research is yet to be undertaken. Sometimes I get the feeling like they would only grant money to you if you’re able to present a finished thesis. It is not, in other words, possible to survive in the academic world if you don’t have a clear view of the goals of your project. Against this institutional background, the freedom of the “creative journey” becomes corrupted by the neoliberal logic of accountability, reliable partnership and set targets.
Between all of these considerations, I have no clear goal in doing my work, although sometimes something reminiscent of a goal might temporarily shift into view, before vanishing again. Perhaps it is my motivation that keeps me afloat. I have a strong sense of belonging and happiness when I work on a new project. That might just be enough.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @kaspertromp
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kasper-tromp-30070314b/?originalSubdomain=nl
Image Credits
Sina Rahmati Mona Borhani