A Deeper Shade of Soul, h3h biennial, Oosterhout, Netherlands. Cur. Nanda Janssen.

Copper sulfate engraved zinc plates, wood soul and brass nails.
Pictures_Peter Cox and studio pictures
︎ 2025

The walled garden of the Our Lady Abbey is normally closed to the public. Jenna Kaës’ gateway temporarily provides access to this English landscape garden. The writings of Hadewijch play a keyrole in the gateway. In the convent library, various nuns have occasionally delved into the visions,songs and letters of this 13th-century female poet and mystic. Jenna Kaës feels moved by Hadewijch’s search for inner emptiness and her desire to embrace theinfinite. According to the artist, Hadewijch’s texts on this subject remain surprisingly relevant eightcenturies later: they invite a deep dive into your inner self, a journey to the edge of nothingness. Theemptiness acts as a gateway to the immeasurable, which is the essence of these open doors. At the artist’s request, the nuns of the Our Lady Abbey chose an appropriate poem. They opted for a textfrom the school of Hadewijch, written in a South Brabantian variant of Middle Dutch. The gatewaydoors function like pages of a book. The space that appears in each panel represents the effect of Hadewijch’s words. The poem opens up, as it were, and points the way to another reality, an expanded awareness – a new dimension.
For the shape of the entrance gate, Jenna Kaëswas inspired by the reliquary of Hildegard van Bingen, a showpiece in the collection of the Our Lady Abbey. For its construction, the artist used techniques that are also used for making relics and liturgical objects. The doors are covered with zinc plates, on which the text has been engraved using zinc-engraving techniques. These plates are attached to a wooden base with nails, with the nail heads arranged in a decorative pattern. The method whereby the plates interlock like puzzle pieces is called marquetry.

Text Nanda Janssen