Biography
My work contains mixed media: photography, sanding, painting, embroidery and textiles.
I’m interested in the idea of ,revealing, by hiding (sanding) parts of a picture.
Through my work I want to express my view on life and my search for meaning and ways to deal with it.
Imperfection, solitude, vulnerability, mortality and transformation are returning themes in my work. I’m interested in representing the inner life and emotions of a person.
The sanded and distorted photographs of young girls and boys are a reaction against the issues of our time, for instance the illusion of perfect beauty created by fashion advertising.
By sanding the surface of the photograph I undo the image of its superficiality and reveal its imperfection, vulnerability and fragility.
After the sanding process I reconstruct the image slowly by hand. I want to show the contrast between aggressive, fast media and sensitive, slow media.
With needlework I repair the canvas and create a new layer on the image. By this I want to refer to almost forgotten crafts, like the dedicated nuns who embroidered in silence and solitude on mystical cloths. By using these delicate crafts, I like to estimate the importance of slowness, dedication and meaning in live.
In my latest work I’m combining classical nude-poses with modern photography, with these works I like to refer to the way the human body is represented throughout history.
Likewise with the embroidery, a women craftsmanship, I want to refer to the position women have now and had earlier in history.
Combining all these media has not only a critical meaning; it is a tribute to the beauty of embroidery crafts. By using it in painting I want to give these crafts a different status.
