Maria Barnas attempted to walk a circle around a village in the North of the Netherlands. As the Dutch landscape is divided mostly by straight lines and ditches, the simple plan led to a complicated journey. Barnas wrote a poem about her experience, leading the reader under and over fences, through the mud and across ditches, through gardens and across forbidden fields, touching upon questions about nature, rules, and barriers, both on a personal and political level.

 

Part of the poem can be read on a folded map, installed in the exhibition ‘In de rug van de zee’ at Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (NH).

The entire poem can be found here (in Dutch only; English translation will follow):​