^{The original photo from just prior to the cornerstone ceremony for the building of the Pilgrim Monument in 1907 is the inspiration for Pieter Paul Pothoven’s latest installation at FAWC}

^{Courtesy of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum} 

by Rebecca M. Alvin

On a sunny morning just about two weeks before his 2026 exhibition opens in the Hudson D. Walker Gallery at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), Pieter Paul Pothoven calls up an image on his laptop. The photograph comes from the archives of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. It shows the last moments before the 1907 cornerstone ceremony to commence the building of the monument that is now such a potent symbol of our town. It was the inspiration for the installation, 11:59, which he first created here at FAWC in 2014. He now plans to re-mount an updated version of it, opening November 5, as so much has changed in this country, and in the world in general in the intervening 12 years.

“What inspired me about this is that this is the last photograph that is known before the ceremony starts. So [when] the ceremony starts, it will be just, like, one white man speaking. And all these faces, like everybody on the stand will look at that one person. And then everything that he will say will somehow be the official narrative. And he somehow imbues that in that stone which is there, and then there’s going to be that huge erect monument and that’s it. And this is kind of the last moment that the air is freestanding. Like, there’s no monument. People are having fun. They’re having multi-directional conversations. I mean, if you zoom in, you see kids playing, women are laughing, folks of color are sitting here on the bleachers, you know. It seems it is such an informal setting in which, somehow a lot of scenarios are still possible,” Pothoven explains. “And now we are just stuck with this one thing that is quite phallic. I would really like to kind of resuscitate this fleeting setting, this kind of informal moment where other things are still possible.”

The new installation will be a little bit different, but will also incorporate wooden reproductions of the bleachers and steps in the photogaph with written texts read aloud and available to visitors to read, with the goal of bringing us to a moment of possibilities. He says there will also be sawdust on the floor so that you can be even more immersed in that moment in time before the monument was built. The idea is to reflect on what could have been the story, what is the story, and what it can be now.

It is the artist’s role to explore questions about the world around us and perhaps, Pothoven suggests, to push on those issues that are not being discussed enough in order to bring things to the surface for the rest of us. And Pothoven has certainly fulfilled this role over the course of his career looking at the legacies and continuing issues around colonialism and to a large extent, capitalism in general. The Dutch artist has created multiple projects that explore these concepts in deeply layered ways. His work Lapiz Lazuli explored the legacy of colonialism in the art world by engaging with the titular material, so prized throughout art history, but which comes from mines in Afghanistan, where he visited in 2009. His 2007 experimental documentary, Mesopotamian Marshes looked at the environmental devastation caused by multiple conflicts and the exploitation of oil companies in the region of Iraq where a precious landscape some call the original Garden of Eden lies. And then there is the RARA project, which has been the most high-profile of Pothoven’s body of work, generating controversy and dialogue across the political spectrum in the Netherlands, even making its way to a committee of the Dutch parliament. The installation utilized interviews with actual members of the underground political activist group Radical Anti-Racist Action (RARA), including confessions of how they engaged in acts of defiance some labeled “terrorist” in the fight to end everyday complicity in South African Apartheid in the 1980s and early ‘90s. RARA was responsible for several bombings, mostly of entities that continued doing business with the apartheid government, back at a time when Pothoven was still a child.

Pothoven earned an MFA from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 2013. It was here that he says his already political inclinations were amplified as he took part in the Occupy Wall Street protests going on while he was at Parsons and studied political science at the New School for Social Research, a college within the same university. It was in this environment of creative rigor, political engagement, and youthful energy that he found great inspiration. “I have always been anti-authority, in a way. But not so much engaged, I guess,” he says. “I feel like Parsons and the New School for Social Research are really the foundation of my critical thinking.”

His connection to Provincetown has been a long and fruitful one. In addition to the exhibition of 11:59 in 2014 and the reboot this year, he was a fellow at FAWC in 2013-2014 and again in 2022-2023. Part of the draw is our incredibly beautiful natural environment, for sure, but also the freedom and openness of the community. “It’s such a great, generous place. And I really love nature around here. I’m a very outdoor person,” he says. “And I also am very interested in its history and especially also in relationship to the Netherlands, where I am from.”

Pothoven says he likes to revisit works he’s done and wishes he could redo this one every three years or so because “I feel that we live in such dire times that I really think it is a good time to rethink some of the histories that are foundational in the way we perceive ourselves and the people around us. And I’m particularly intrigued by the Pilgrim Monument because that’s such a foundational story of the United States, I think, which has very clear roots in the Netherlands, as well…I think by redoing a work, it also becomes more of a ritual than just an incidental project,”  he says. As an example, he describes the first version of this project in 2013 coming out of the Obama years, where there was a sense of progress. “And now we’re in a whole different state of emergence almost, I would say,” he explains.

When many of us are feeling exhausted and disheartened by the overwhelming chaos and horribleness of the current administration in the United States and the multiple devastating conflicts, genocides, and political shifts toward fascism, it can be difficult to stay motivated and inspired to work on the kinds of deeply disturbing themes and heavy subject matter to which Pothoven is attracted. “I see things that are not discussed and I’m interested in underlying structures. But how do you translate that into something that works? That has a certain aesthetic to it, where it invites people in, or, you know, contributes,” he says. “I mean, it’s very easy to—and also very relieving—just to go in the street and scream, but I think art maybe gives [you] kind of an interesting place where you can also make something that’s more constructive or more impactful.”

11:59 by Pieter Paul Pothoven will be on view in the Hudson D. Walker Gallery, at FAWC, 24 Pearl St., Provincetown, November 6 – 17. There will be a reception with Pothoven on Friday, November 6, 5 – 6 p.m. For more information call 508.487.9960 or visit fawc.org.