Tohu wa-Bohu is a collaborative artist’s book project by Extrapool and guest curator Taco Hidde Bakker. During two residency periods at Extrapool, six visual artists explored the interface of photography and risograph/stencil printing loosely inspired by the concept of tohu wa-bohu and the city of Nijmegen.

Tohu wa-bohu is a term from the book of Genesis. It has traditionally been translated as ‘without form and void’, and more recently by Robert Alter as ‘welter and waste’. Originally referring to futility or the trackless vacancy of the desert, we extrapolated its meaning to include the idea of creation based on what already exists rather than a form of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing).