THE CREATION STORY OF THE JOMA

P R E S S

Kester Freriks writes in the NRC of 21 & 22 May 2022:
Quest for reconciliation in images
The Joma is a museum that mainly originated from a great inner struggle. Not that Van der Heijden says so in so many words, but it is easy to read from what he shows. An inner crisis around the age of 45 brought him to something he always knew, but actually ignored: his Jewish origins, his 'Jewishness'. Van der Heijden: “I always knew I was Jewish, but it played no role in my life. Until, in a search for spirituality, I suddenly wondered why I didn't do more with my Jewish identity. And immediately I ran into a dilemma that never ceases to amaze me: How can the beauty and wealth that Judaism and a book like the Talmud offer me be conciled with the horror of the Holocaust? How can those two extremes coexist? The beginning of many of his works are the terrifying and disturbing photographs that the Allies took of the concentration camps: what they saw defies description. “I turn the sinister into something aesthetic,” he explains. For Van der Heijden, making these works of art is the only way to come to terms with the horrors of the Holocaust. He emphatically states that he "has never been a victim".But his grandfather, Martin Spanjaard, was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942, as were numerous other relatives. “The second generation has to deal with a concealed family life and especially with the painful realization that your parents should not have existed. In fact, I devote my entire life to legitimizing my existence,” he says.
[translated & shortened by MvdH]

 Kees Keijer writes in the Parool of June 21, 2022 on PS 32 & 33:
"It is a form of meeting art"
How does someone come to start their own museum? “My experience as a second or post-war generation Jew and my ‘traumas’ are apparently so great that I had to do something with them.” Traumas is in quotes here because Van der Heijden never felt like a victim. “That's complicated. It is very ambivalent and you also see that with other second-generation Jews.” After the conservatory, Van der Heijden studied psychology and obtained his doctorate in social sciences. “ When I was 57 I went to the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy. That had to do with a crisis I was in. Because of the crisis, Van der Heijden started researching what Judaism actually entails. “Judaism is beautiful, but on the other hand you have the horror of the Holocaust. That huge discrepancy, I had to do something with it. And I thought that I could only do that by making visual art. . . . My father was in hiding and has become psychotic. He thought he was Jesus. There he came out again. After the war he worked very hard and was the founder of the Amsterdams Psychotechnich Laboratorium. After his death it turned out that he had spent his whole life making a play out of his war experiences. In it he also wanted to process the history of anti-Semitism. He never succeeded. I was also afraid that my museum would end up like my father's idea, that I wouldn't succeed. Actually, this museum – and I say this as a psychologist and not as an artist – is the same thing. I am actually continuing what my father wanted. That is why I am happy and proud and I also really enjoy being here in the museum.” [translated & shortened by MvdH]