KRAAMKAMERS

Bart Houwers received a grant of the development of new work. In KRAAMKAMERS, farrowing crates were installed in each bedroom of his childhood home, a factory pig farm in the east of the Netherlands. Positioned exactly where beds would normally stand, and where he himself was born, the galvanized steel structures confine sows in place as they give birth to their piglets.

Bart is a Dutch visual artist and spatial designer. Through large-scale - and site-specific installations, he investigates the fetish of perpetual economic growth, particularly as it manifests in intensive farming and the commodification of farm animals. His work examines how this growth-driven logic reorganizes landscapes and infrastructures while shaping the cultural values and psychological realities of farming families. Drawing on both personal and national histories, and working with pre-existing materials and language, he constructs fragmented, often displaced structures that reframe familiar environments.