Ada Dispa’s bunny
One of the artists who makes miniatures for our contemporary book of hours and pilgrims ‘Seasons of Life’ is Ada Dispa (Disparada), born in 1960 in Heemskerk. She studied at the art academies in Kampen and Arnhem.
Disparada draws associatively and with a smile. It does not take an explicit position. After all, a person’s conceptual apparatus and visual ability always fall short of accurately depicting complex reality. It shows only a few aspects of a subject, and the viewer has to see what he is emphasizing. In her personal comic-like drawing style, she sketches her image of humanity. A thin veneer of civilization restrains lust for power, gluttony, and sexual excesses; just one crack and the devils break loose… Concepts such as good and evil appear to be relative and dependent on the assessment of people in a particular place and at a particular moment in history.
For ‘Seasons of Life’, Ada drew the four seasons.
Ada herself speaks:
The Empty Space
By drawing, I guard my Empty Space (similar to what is called “the hole in the mind”). It is not an identifiable space, but rather resembles an endlessly elastic moment. I can’t inhabit this space, but I can keep it free of the noise of thoughts and emotions. In this way, life can take place on me and eat away at my nerves, fill me with joy and love or pain and fear and so on, without disturbing this space. And insofar as these signs of life invade my Empty Space, and of course they do, they are filtered, abstracted, or clothed with anecdote by drawing.
In short; presentable before they are sent out again. I do want to deliver drawings that are resilient and ‘readable’. My naked signs of life are of no use to the viewer. And, besides, coming out with it would be unbearably cold and painful and perhaps even embarrassing and unseemly. Thus I carefully maintain what I call my Empty Space and shove the presentable noise to my spectators.
