This is W.C. Reij, a retired professor and engineer, and also my grandfather. We’ve always been close. He was very important to my creative upbringing, taking me to museums, drawing together with me, and meticulously following my art career for as long as he was able to. 

During the last few years of his life he had to deal with aphasia, an impairment causing him to slowly lose his linguistic and other cognitive abilities. When he could barely speak any longer, Covid-19 robbed us of the only way of communication we had left: touch. 

That’s when I decided to make an art experience that was tailored to his specific condition; one that was to be experienced somewhat through sight, but predominantly through touch. The shape of Object voor Opa (Object for Grandpa) is based on movements I remembered him doing with my hands, on ways of touching and holding on that he seemed to enjoy. 

I shot this video during the first encounter he had with the object. It is a fragment of the approximately 40-minute duration of the experience of his hands discovering and rediscovering the object, him looking at me, back at the object, and discovering it again. He had been nearly constantly holding it during what turned out to be the last two months of his life. 

In loving memory of Willem Cornelis Reij, 4 November 1923 – 3 September 2020