The Bystander, 2026

The kitchen window of Daily Practice looks out onto the Erasmus MC. I know this because I only saw the building consciously when Moosje lay there (winter – spring 2024 with Covid-19, summer 2025 with a bacterial infection) and wondered how she was doing. Moosje asked if I could create something for the kitchen window, as an addition to her installation, as a form of ongoing collaboration.
To relate more specifically to the Erasmus MC, I visited the silent contemplation room -which feels related to the silence meditations in Daily Practice- and the courtyard there. In both places, family and friends of patients leave messages: With a prayer, a postcard, a LED-candle, a name formed by pebbles. Bystanders: Those who gather around the bed, go home after visiting hours, who are waiting for a new medical update.
Based on this research and my memories I created a small kitchen window installation, composed of a self-made candle in connection to Moosje and a collage with a transparent print – a photo I made in the Erasmus MC contemplation room- and ornamental hobby stickers for making postcards. Questioning whether channeled attention and energy can travel distances to another being, influence physical processes, thus changing the course of a disease.

Suzanne Weenink, May 2026

The Bystander, 2026

Digital print on transparant foil
Stickers
88 x 57 cm

Candle:
palm oil free staerin
wick
various materials, see below
height 17 cm, diameter 8 cm

(A candle is made upside down
what is now the top is in the making
the bottom)

From top to bottom as the candle
is NOW:

PROTECTION
– Soil from my own plant
– Soil from the plant of my beloved
aunt Nel who died on May 12 2025
– Soil from the EMC Courtyard
– Labradorite stone
– Sage

COMPANION (Donor)
– Patch (wrapped around the stone
gifted by Moosje with the date of
the announced lung transplantation)

MIRACLES
– Rosebuds
– Incense (which has sunk
through the fluid wax
to the Companion)

MOOSJE
– The line
‘I am very committed to life’
as it appears in
‘On Wards’ (2023), p. 95
– Haribo gummibears

CLARITY
– Red thread with three knots:
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
– Rock crystal

SUPPORT
– Tea leaves from
Iranian orange blossom tea
gifted by Hosein
– Tea leaves from
Chinese black tea
gifted by Ying
– two small stones from
the EMC courtyard
(one has sunk
through the fluid wax
to Moosje)