Marike Schuurman | Kohle

About

Marike Schuurman, Bergener See PH 2,5, 2022

Dorothée Nilsson Gallery is pleased to present KOHLE, a solo exhibition by Dutch artist and photographer Marike Schuurman as part of EMOP Berlin 2025. Under EMOP’s leitmotif What stands between us, Schuurman’s exhibition examines the profound social and environmental scars left by lignite mining in former East Germany.

Schuurman’s photographic practice navigates the tension between documentation and abstraction, capturing human-altered landscapes with a perceptive eye. Her images, rooted in specific locations, document both their transformations and their enigmatic, often overlooked qualities. Yet rather than functioning as straightforward records, her photographs invite a conceptual and sensory contemplation – what remains, what disappears, and how we perceive the traces of history imprinted on the land. With KOHLE, Schuurman brings her distinctive perspective to the legacy of erasure and resilience in the Lusatian landscape, creating a dialogue between past destruction and future uncertainty.

In the series Kohle (1985-2017) she documents lost villages and displaced communities, places erased from the map without public consent. Using her “Reclaiming Negatives” technique, she captures the melancholic presence of what is no longer there – ghostly landscapes and erratic boulders that serve as silent memorials to fractured histories. The series Toxic (2022- ) shifts focus to the ecological aftermath. What remains of these mined landscapes are toxic craters slowly filling with water – potential future lakes in Lusatia, yet too acidic for life. Schuurman captured the water surfaces of several of these sites using Polaroids, each reflecting different levels of acidity. She then developed the Polaroids in the same lake water, where the chemical interaction between bases and acids produced striking colours and textures. The result is a series of surreal yet hauntingly beautiful images that mask the lifelessness of these artificial waterscapes.

Through her lens, Schuurman confronts the arrogance of humankind’s attempt to dominate nature, offering a powerful reflection on destruction, transformation, and the limits of recovery.