Residency time: August 2025 Show time: during Vruchtbare Grond festival
Describe how art is important to society?
To me, art is an important tool to question the way things are, to challenge norms, dominant ideas and systems that govern our lives. To reflect. To imagine. To give space to alternative ideas, different perspectives and experiences of being in the world.
How does your work comment on current social or political issues?
My textile works can be seen as balancing ambiguously between messy, lumpy, vulnerable bodies and absorbing, clumsy, protective enclosures. My drawings are built up like fragile fabrics, with clusters of colors and textures throbbing and swelling, carefully creating images.
With my work, I want to visualize and reflect on vulnerability. This urge comes from the experience of inhabiting a body that is simultaneously caring and in need of care. I want to emphasize the importance of care, empathy and softness, to resist the harsh, fast-paced reality we live in, in which we are often disconnected from each other, our body and our environment. Expressing vulnerability goes against the societal expectation of blending in, hiding pain and difficulties and having to deal with them individually.
How has your style changed over time?
I have a background in painting but gradually moved towards working with textiles, because I felt the need to engage physically with the material and create three-dimensional, flexible works. Textiles interest me because of the meanings they carry and the intimate relationship they have to the body.
Is there a specific environment or material that's integral to your work?
Recently, I have been focusing on the material wool. Collecting it from local sheep, washing it, felting it and combining it with other various collected materials. To add color to the wool, I have been exploring natural dyes. This sprouted from an interest in ecology and from wanting to interact with the more- than-human world.
I have found wool to be very fitting with the themes I’m interested in. Working with organic material implies thinking about cycles of life and death, underlining temporality and fluidity. Wool grows from the skin, an organ that functions as a porous, blurry border between the inside and outside of a body. It easily holds and absorbs substances that it touches, which is reminiscent of the way our bodies are carriers of our experiences and the environments we live in.