In the spiral exhibition room of Tresoar—the museum, archive, and library of Fryslân—artist Hedwich Rooks presents Ynfra, an installation that reveals the hidden Southwal Volcano. Unknown to many, this ancient volcano lies two kilometres beneath the Wadden Sea, near Harlingen. It formed around 300 million years ago near the equator and was only discovered in the 1970s during oil and gas exploration. The temperature inside its crater is still 30 degrees Celsius higher than the surrounding seabed, and the Earth’s magnetic field is notably stronger in this area—suggesting the volcano is still faintly glowing.
Rooks, who grew up in Grou and is deeply fascinated by geological processes, displays the volcanic rocks that form the Southwal Volcano. The title Ynfra is Frisian for “infra” and refers to what lies beneath the surface: images, sounds, and radiation embedded in the earth, invisible to us. The centre of the room becomes a crater from which volcanic elements radiate. Sections of the floor are covered in volcanic rock. Infrared lighting evokes subterranean heat, casting warm hues across the space. The installation includes video fragments—from visits to a volcanological institute in Sicily that monitors Etna and Stromboli, to a performance by Rooks at sea, directly above the Southwal Volcano. Wearing a reflective aluminised suit—normally used to protect against extreme heat—she walks the line between ebb and flow on a sandbank, melting volcanic rock. With this, Rooks invites us to attune to signals from the earth that often escape our awareness.
Ynfra is realised in collaboration with the Noorderlicht Biennale.
The work of Hedwich Rooks is supported by Netwerk Cultuur en Natuur, part of the We the North talent development programme.
Part Two: On Vlieland
A second part of Ynfra is on view at Brouwerij Fortuna on Vlieland, within the exhibition Het onzichtbare zichtbaar (Making the Invisible Visible), presented by Noorderlicht. Here, in a landscape shaped by dunes, fresh drinking water is drawn from a hidden aquifer beneath the island. Rain slowly filters through layers of sand, collected and brought back to the surface—a silent rhythm of falling, sinking, storing. Invisible to the eye, yet vital to those who live here and those who visit.
In this context, artists Louis Braddock Clarke, Michael Najjar, and Hedwich Rooks present works that reveal what usually remains out of sight. Their focus: geological processes hidden deep beneath volcanoes, within veins of coal, or along tectonic fractures on the ocean floor—places where the Earth reshapes itself. Photography is not used to document, but to uncover; as a geological sensor, a medium of time, pressure, heat, and transformation.
Here, the Earth becomes a camera, a brush, a tool of technology. A bridge between knowledge and imagination.
Vlieland becomes not just a site of observation, but of resonance—an island echoing with subterranean stories, made visible by artists who tune in to what unfolds on the edge of sight and time.
Location: Brouwerij Fortuna, Fortweg 10, 8899 CC, Vlieland, from 12 juli to 7 september. Opening hours: tue t/m sat from 14.00 – 17.00 uur.