Echoes of New Netherland #1
- Jul 25
- 13 min read
Updated: Jul 29
A new series focused on people creating art and literature inspired by New Netherland history
Interview with Airco Caravan
Netherlands-born conceptual artivist Airco Caravan (New York/Amsterdam), has exhibited internationally, and founded and curated fundraiser exhibitions for women’s rights. Caravan uses her sometimes provocative art to fight racism, misogyny, and inequality.
Airco and I recently became acquainted after my Book Talk with the New Amsterdam History Center. Her artwork about New Netherland, If We Could Change History, immediately intrigued me. She delivers modern critiques and commentary through thought-provoking sculptures, installations, murals, and zines. Airco’s work deals with the dichotomy of loving history while confronting its flaws. I immediately asked her if we could do an interview because I wanted to learn more.
First of all, I wanted to ask about your name, Airco Caravan, if you want to share the meaning?
It’s a funny story. It’s also a stupid story. I used to be an art director and graphic designer, and then I started my artist career, and I didn’t want to mix it up. I needed an international, English-sounding name. So, Airco, that’s a funny name because in the Netherlands it means air conditioning. The reason I chose Airco is that it’s like a fresh breeze in this world. That’s what I want to do with my art. And Caravan, like the trailer you put on your car when you go on holiday. It’s seen, on one hand, as freedom; on the other hand, it’s seen as boring. A little bit of a small-town feeling.
Nice explanation—I didn’t expect that. I thought it had a sort of corporate enterprise feel to it, which felt fitting for your work with the Pop Art appropriation of consumer goods.
Some people think it’s an art collective, but I also deliberately chose a name ending in “O,” so people sometimes think it’s a male artist. That has to do with sexism and stuff like that…
The ambiguity is kind of nice.
Yes, that’s on purpose.
How did you become an artist? You mentioned being an art director and graphic designer. Was this a calling from a young age?
Yes, I knew I wanted to do something with art. When I was studying at HKU Academy of Arts Utrecht for my bachelor's degree, I had to choose between becoming a full-time artist or getting a commercial art job. I interned at an advertising agency, and I really liked it, so I decided on that as a career. After many years, it was a very nice job, but you cannot really express yourself. So, I became a freelancer, and that’s when I started my way back to the fine arts.
That really resonates with me. I went to school for sculpture, but thought I’ll never get a job doing this, so I switched to Industrial Design, designing consumer goods. So, that’s my full-time job now. I’m currently designing cutlery and tablewares for my day job. But I think creative people always need an outlet, even when you’re lucky enough to have a creative job. It’s just different when you're doing work for a client versus for yourself. I still need a creative outlet, and for me lately, that’s been writing.
So, how did you end up in New York City?
I was born and raised in Boven-Leeuwen, a very small village in the Netherlands, and I always knew I wanted to live in a city. I ended up in Amsterdam, the biggest city in the Netherlands. I loved it for many, many years, but it still was too small. When I first came to New York in the late ‘90s, I realized—it doesn’t happen in Amsterdam—it happens here! It’s like the vibe, it’s in the air. I can’t really explain, but I fell in love. Instantly.
Many years later, my husband and I decided to get a visa and start living here. Just before the pandemic, we had our visa applications ready, and then we had to wait another two and a half years before we could move.
So it’s just been a couple of years in NY?
Yeah, about four years.
Growing up in the Netherlands, were you taught about the history of New Netherland?
Yeah, only that one sentence: New York was once New Amsterdam and that it was bought for 60 guilders. A little about slavery. The West India Company. Just a tiny little bit. I didn’t know that much.
Same here. It was a blip in a textbook. More focus was on the fur trade than on the fact that there was a Dutch colony and that the Dutch originally built what became New York City.
Can you tell me more about your thoughts when creating the Sarah Rapalje bottle? I immediately laughed when I saw it because of the bold title, "It's a White Girl," but like a lot of your work, the feeling is different after a little more reflection. I questioned whether I laughed because I felt uncomfortable about that. Her "White Christian Female" attributes were so lauded, but that implies a racist hierarchy, suggesting a White Christian is worth more than other babies. From an Indigenous perspective, the first settlers did multiply like pests. The Rapalje descendants number at least one million Americans today. Is that a good thing? Perhaps not for the Lenape who might have wished to stop these pests from proliferating, if they could. Your work brings up some internal conflict I had while writing about Sarah. I love New Netherland history, but I don't believe it's beyond reproach. Colonialism was terrible in so many ways. Yet if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here today.
I first read about Sarah in Russel Shorto’s book The Island in the Center of the World and I realized she was a milestone in many ways because the first baby also means the first ‘real’ inhabitant of the colony. I called her ‘white' girl, as an opposite to the Lenape. Racism was already there. The white colonists thought they were far superior. Also on the bottle is ‘Women nr. 1’ as a feminist statement. The Pest AC label means Airco Caravan’s Pest Control: Pest AC, For A Better World. This label is on every item I design. The colonial series has the subtitle: If We Could Change History. That is what I wish for with almost all those products. The products protect threatened people (women, indigenous, LGBTQIA2S+, black and brown people etc), but eliminate murderers, dictators, tyrants, and all racist, colonial, and oppressive concepts.
Thank you for the special edition with my name added as a descendant in the fine print. It's an honor to have my name included in your work.
In your series, If We Could Change History, I wondered what influenced your decolonial views and what made you start thinking about that as a subject?
In 2016-2017, I wanted to do something with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and started thinking about it and how to honor him. We don’t have that many black heroes in the Netherlands. My town, and even at Academy, were mostly white. So, in 2017, I started reading a lot about racism and thought, why didn’t I know this? So, this project was really important for me. It was a revelation. I learned so much. That’s when I started to put it into my art and make it the message in any possible way. Because, still, a lot of white folks just have no idea. In the U.S. and the Netherlands. That’s how I started to be more of an activist and became involved in social justice and equality.
I thought it was very clever how you represent everyday objects, like cleaning products, with subversive social justice messages. They're often heavy topics, but there's have some humor in them, too. I don’t know if everyone will read it that way, but I think some of them are quite funny. Maybe it’s my own wishful thinking for an actionable, simple solution to complex problems—if only those cleaning products worked to correct past wrongs or stop current atrocities!
In your Reconquering Haarlem exhibition that you put together, you connected artists in your East Harlem, NY community with a gallery in Haarlem, Netherlands. How was that received?
It was great. People were very positive. They knew I’m not actually coming to conquer, but it’s a way to give attention to the history of conquest. Since I live in East Harlem in New York, I had to do something with Harlem and Haarlem in the Netherlands. I started reading more about the history of New York and discovered I live just around the corner of the location of the Dutch village of Nieuw Haarlem, founded in 1657. So, that was extra fun. It’s a personal connection, to introduce my artist collective friends [Elektra KB, Thomas Heath, Élan Cadiz, Helina Metaferia, Demian DinéYazhi'], from Harlem to Haarlem. It was well-received.
It’s unique that you’re in that position to bring Harlem and Haarlem together. Is there anything that seems particularly Dutch about your neighborhood of East Harlem?
No, the oldest church in the area was Dutch Reformed, but now it’s mostly Spanish Harlem—Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Dominican. It had been Jewish, Italian, and German.
The family in my next novel, the De Forests, were the first to settle East Haarlem in 1636, but they were forced to abandon their lands during Kieft's War (1643-1645). I have other Dutch ancestors who were part of the foundation of Nieuw Haarlem, along with Danes, Germans, Frenchmen, and Swedes. The layering and mixing of cultures is so deeply engrained in New York and East Harlem's history.
Back to the art you’ve done over the years, does anything stand out as significant as to when your style or point-of-view solidified into “your style?”
I had two projects, about 12 years ago, that were important. One was about abortion. I was questioning the pro-life movement. I ordered 2,000 silicone fetuses that they used to hand out to people. I ordered so many that they ran out of stock, and I made a huge carpet of them in the gallery.
The other one was a project that involved the Dalai Lama. I went to Tibet and never experienced such a policed people. If they have a small picture of the Dalai Lama, they will be thrown in jail. That stuck with me. A year later, I had the idea to commission painters in China to compile a portrait of the Dalai Lama, cut into 16 pieces. So they would have one part of an ear or neck to make an oil painting. I told them it was abstract. They didn’t know what it was part of—for their own security. So, I had all these artists in China sending little pieces of the Dalai Lama to me over a few months. It worked out really well as a statement of peace and unity, with all these pieces coming together. Like most ideas, it also developed and evolved. One studio got the measurements wrong and made a huge version, and after a year I thought, maybe this is a sign that I need to do a bigger portrait. So, I continued the process, and that turned into a 10x16’ portrait.
It’s so interesting to have a community of artists who don’t know they’re a community.
And they still don’t know because it would be uncomfortable and maybe dangerous for them to know, but their work has been exhibited several times in the Netherlands. That was an important project for me, to establish myself as an artist and to get my message across.
Returning to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King—I decided to create 50 statues of him to send out into a network. I sent statues to people important in the struggle for equality. I sent one to John Lewis and the Obamas, the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, fighters for equality in the Netherlands, and I put them in public spaces. It was very interesting what happened to those. They were 50cm, like 20 inches high, made of resin. Some disappeared, some were vandalized, and some stood there for months. I put one in Martin Luther King Park in Amsterdam with some steel wire, so it couldn't be taken. Every statue, I put a QR code so people could find info.
Someone from that park asked why there isn’t a real bronze statue of MLK in the park named after him. I worked with the municipality to propose different sizes with different prices. I found the bronze company. I got the permits. Then, in the meeting with the municipality, they said, no thank you, it’s not suitable. I was really, really angry. And I thought, fuck it, I’m going to do it myself. So I called the bronze guy, and I told him, “The bad news is they pulled the plug, and the good news is that I’m going to do it anyway. Do you want to help me?” He said yes and was my companion in this project. And it’s still standing there! We drove in with a van and we just started drilling in the concrete. No permits. It was a terrible noise, but people just walked by. We put it in and ran off, but I called the newspaper, so they wouldn’t just take it out. It was my statement. Like Martin Luther King—we did it anyway.
Yes, in the spirit of MLK, I love the reverse vandalism of that! That reminds me of your reverse vandalism during the Met Gala. You put anti-Bezos spray in the gift shop, right?
It was nerve-wracking. I went early, but it was crazy. I smuggled it in. I was thinking of the soup can throwers. I would never do that, but I can relate to the rebellion. My heart beat was up.
I bet! I love to think of someone browsing in the gift shop and giving it a double take, or thinking it was brilliant and taking it to the register, wanting to buy it. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that.
Me too! I don’t know what happened to it. I think someone working there took it and threw it away, or something like that.
So, that brings me to ask—Do you have any current or upcoming exhibitions?
There’s an ongoing show at Art Bodega, in the East Village, 209 East 3rd St. It’s a bodega-style art gallery. Easy to walk in with lots of fun artists, from cheap to not too expensive. It’s a really nice gallery to visit. Also, there’s the Grandscale Mural Project on Lexington Ave & 124 St in New York. That will be up until 2027.
In the Netherlands, there’s a show in Amsterdam, Utopia, ZomerSalon Royaal 2026 hosted by CBK Zuidoost. It’s a collaboration with an artist in Amsterdam. We created ‘Heart Softener’ in three languages, Dutch, English and Sranantongo, the language spoken in Suriname, a former colony of the Netherlands, back in the days exchanged for New Amsterdam. In the neighborhood Zuidoost, also called Bijlmer, live many Suriamese-Dutch people, who are descendants of the enslaved Africans. That’s why I wanted to include Sranantongo. The show runs until August 15th.
And November 6-8 there’s a pop-up group show with my art collective Art Allies (artallies.nl) in Amsterdam, and the title is: All We Can Eat. Food is always political. So I will focus on the Three Sisters, the way the Lenape grew their food: corn, beans, and squash together. A very smart concept. And also I will work with ancient African rice. Enslaved African women brought the rice hidden in their braids to the Americas.
Are there any new projects you’re working on or thinking about that you’d like to share?
I’m going to do an artist's residency on Governor's Island starting July 20th until the end of October. Then, in October, on the weekends, there will be a show of what the group has made. It’s a big house. Every room is a studio. And there will be a big group show from the end of October until the first weekend in November.
For the residency, I’m currently researching African Burial Grounds. I already worked on those in my residency last year, but there’s many more in New York. Yesterday I discovered even more. I visit these spots. Some have memorials, but most do not and have disappeared. Like it’s now a parking lot, or a school has been built on top of it, something like that. I find stones or rubbish or anything I find on the street, then cast them in resin. The shapes of the resin are based on 17th-century Bellarmine jugs, traditional Dutch jug shapes. On the front is the seal of Amsterdam. So, I use historical Bellarmine jugs that have been 3D scanned and 3D printed at a smaller scale, so I can make castings to include the items I find. I’ve also done some with the more modern, cleaning product-shaped vessels. I want to include all the African Burial Grounds, as far as they are known, to pay respect and acknowledge what the Dutch did to all the enslaved Africans.
I also want to make a zine about it. More zines! I also want to make a new map of New York with all of those spots connected. I don’t know how that will look or if I will succeed. It has to be worked out yet. A lot of work to do!
I want to know more about this city. We didn’t learn enough in school about this history. You need to know about the history to know where you’re going.
I really enjoyed that about your book—I see Dutch heritage that I recognize from how I was raised in the Netherlands. Many things, like Sinterklaas, have not changed in 400 years. I’ve read a lot about the facts, but now it comes to life because it’s about a family.
Studying history from 400 years ago really changed my conception of the United States. So often we’re taught that it all begins in 1776, but that’s not the case. I used to think the 1800s were forever ago, and now that seems like nothing.
And then the Native people, like the middens they found in New York, dated back to like 9,000 years ago. 400 years is like nothing compared to how long the Lenape have lived here.
Mindblowing. It really puts history in a different perspective.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I loved hearing about all your work. It’s such a pleasure to meet someone who is also fascinated by New Netherland history and became inspired to make art about it.
Please visit Airco's website, aircocaravan.com, to learn even more about her work or for any inquiries. Follow Airco Caravan on Instagram.
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