How do you describe your own art practice?
With my sculptural artistic practice, I aim to create spaces, images and stories in which the power of objects unfolds, so that the human and the non-human touch one another in resonance, and this touch a space for contemplation unfolds. In a broader sense, I see myself as a still-life artist. In my studio practice, I arrange and compose in relation to discarded (waste-)objects, mostly everyday household items, which I salvage from piles of trash on the side of the road and carry with me. I do feel overwhelmed by socio-ecological issues of mass consumption and pollution and thematise this by addressing exhaustion, exploitation, injury, response-ability, appreciation, care and vulnerability. However, in relationship with the things themselves, the dialogue often takes other directions than addressing a theme forefront. Arranging with these objects means exchanging and balancing between the objects and their characteristics, and between my body, thoughts, needs and visions, as well as between interactions with the space and the situation in which we find ourselves. The dialogue leaves an impression while simultaneously evoking words and associations, linking to historical research and insights, texts of all sorts, to images, a colour, a shape, a thing, a person, a gesture, a rhythm, a material, a world. The collaborative process forms a tapestry, a texture, like a field full of flowers, which is roamed over and from which specific blooms are plucked until the field is left behind and the bouquet, as a composition, is deliberately positioned for contemplation in a space isolated from the field.
Which question or theme is central in your work?
How can spaces, images and stories be positioned in space in which the power of (waste)objects unfolds, so that the human and the non-human touch one another in a way that resonates and with this touch creates a space for contemplation, imagination, recovery and utopia.
What was your first experience with art?
Every day on my way home from school, I would go out alone to pick flowers in the meadow. I would bring the bouquet home, put it in the living room on a specific spot in a specific light, wait for my family to look at it, nurse it over the next couple days, watch it wilt and take it back to the meadow to compost it.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
Picking flowers in the meadow and things from piles of waste deposited on the roadside ‘for free’.
What do you need in order to create your work?
A world of matter and spirituality, time, other people.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
Just recently discovered Paola di Bellos ‘Concrete Island’ (1996) in Kunstforum Bd. 168 and enjoyed Nicole Wermers Abwaschskulpturen #5 and #6’ (2013) at Lenbachhaus Munich.
