Anke Land

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio, a large woven tapestry measuring approximately 4 by 5 metres, shows a universe in which light and dark battle for dominance. In this space, a bright white spiral of clouds drifts from the bottom left to the top right corner. Anke Land found the inspiration for this work in a small black-and-white photograph from the Second World War. The photo is intersected by a plume of white smoke, possibly the trail of a plane that had been shot down. A coincidental vertical line cuts through the image and divides the surface in the proportions of the golden ratio, a mathematical formula that has long been used to create balance and harmony in art.

The yarns for the design were chosen primarily based on colour, reflection and transparency. The yarns’ different properties create surprising structures in the surface, which determine the reflection. The image is surrounded by a separately woven golden ‘frame’, in which 150 small human figures run after each other as if in a stop-motion sequence. Land borrowed the figures from photographer Eadweard Muybridge, sculpted them in dough and photographed the baked figurines. The project was supported by the Van Reekum Culture Prize 2023 and was on display in the Huygens Building of Radboud University in Nijmegen in 2024. In December, it moved to Apeldoorn, where it can be seen in Museum CODA until April 2025.

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Photos by Josefina Eikenaar and Pier Pennings