Biography

WEEF.collective is a Rotterdam-based performance and textile duo by Lieve Fikkers (Rotterdam, NL, 1998) and Hélène Vrijdag (Rennes, FR, 1996). They graduated in 2020 from the Performance-program at Maastricht Institute of Performative Arts. Lieve also works as a visual artist, scenographer and light designer. Hélène as a composer, singer and sound designer with a Gender Studies masters degree from Utrecht University. WEEF.collective creates time-specific and site-specific weaving performances with an ecofeminist agenda. Weaving is a disruptive act; it forces them and their audience to soften and slow down. It is their way to resist patriarchy, fast fashion and the capitalist rat race. 

Performances by WEEF.collective are durational works with the meticulous and slow hand craft as the driving force of the performance. Light, music, text and movement give thematic context to the act of weaving. Using organic or recycled fibers and materials only, the tapestries that they weave during their performances become tangible memories of the hand-made process, and are exhibited (and for sale) as independent art works. 

WEEF.collective uses ecofeminist and queer methodologies to embody durability not only artistically, but also in as an organization: with slower processes, a relational approach, and ethics of care.

Artistic project

KILL YOUR DARLING (KYD) is a durational weaving and composting performance exploring the connection between ecocide and femicide. It's a traveling soil-specific concept that invites death and decomposition into an uncanny meditation on gender-based violence. WEEF weaves a compostable tapestry named DARLING, digs her grave and buries it so it may r.i.p. (rot in peace). 

‘Kill your darlings’ refers to deleting good ideas in theatre that don’t contribute to the desired end-result. We relate this to attachments to our own artworks in an ecocidal world, and to the responsibility of textile-artists to antagonize consumerism and overproduction. What if instead of producing new objects, we created ghost tapestries: 100% compostable works destined to die after conception? What does it mean to create something to unexist? 

Stacking numbers of femicides worldwide give the phrase a gruesome meaning. These deaths haunt us and call us to action: how can our artworks disappear into the soil, while the ghosts of these women demand visibility, justice and life? 

KILL YOUR DARLING is built in three acts: 
DARLING, a durational weaving and digging performance (10 days) 
KILL, a collective burial of the woven tapestry (1 hour) 
LIFE, the compost process underground (6-12 months)

Format: durational weaving and grave digging performance with burial 

Size of audience: 50 to 350 persons

Specific location: location with access to soil, liminal spaces between nature and urban; open fields; wastelands

Timing/duration: multiple days