Mastwoelingen

The main material used to build the ship in Mastwoelingen (roughly translated as ‘mast windings’) is an antique sail carrying the salt, water and oil stains of it’s long service life. The ship is a scaled down model of the Batavia, aVOC trade ship that sailed between Holland and the East Indies in the seventeenth century. In 1602 the VOC (Dutch East India Company) was founded; the first-ever multinational corporation that became the world’s largest commercial enterprise of the seventeenth century.

This period is referred to as ‘the golden age’; it was a time in which Dutch culture and standards of living life took an unprecedented upturn due to the booming spice trade. The dark side of this prosperity was the colonisation of Indonesia and other countries which the Dutch exploited to get their wealth. The events that took place hundreds of years ago still have repercussions for life in the Netherlands today.

The ship’s heavy sails are close to collapsing onto the hull which lies stranded on an unmoving fabric ocean.