My Artistic Goals & Purpose

I explore collective and individual trauma through the body by creating spaces in which this is sensible.

In ‘The Ethics of Ambiguity’ by Simone de Beauvoir, it is argued that if we cannot freely relate to our ambitions, we become interchangeable. Like soldiers, the reservoir of bodies performing a certain task is continually replenished when someone falls. This image fascinates me, raising questions about the extent of our control over choices and how they are made. It makes the body political. Because we are uncertain about who or what influences what is sensible and how we relate to it.

I am fascinated by generational and cultural bodily transmission, suspecting that unraveling it holds potential for more conscious feeling and choosing in our actions. Daan van Kampenhout, in ‘The Tears of the Ancestors’, describes how collective trauma is transmitted through the body, influencing behavior. To address major complex issues like migration, climate change and in general cutting off people’s basic needs (of which our narratives are one), exposing these mechanisms is necessary.

Research questions:

What environments contribute to unbiased feeling?

What bodily memories are stored in our system, and how do we access them?

How does this shape the relationships and connections we form with ourselves, others, and major complex issues?

I experiment with creating spaces for participants to construct a new reality. During Mugoba (2023), a collaborator noted that we had established a concept where we physically embodied a theme with participants. I aim to deepen this by tapping into participants’ imagination and exploring the risks in creating a ‘brave space’. I tend towards an approach in which both; spiritual practices and scientific methods are part of the research.

The trauma I experienced around the birth of my still born baby was both individual and collective. My relationship with my own body and the societal roles I hold as a mother, artist, and European provide rich ground for questions about bodily memory and generational transmission.

In addition to the human body, I currently work a lot with the animal body, especially that of the deer. The deer symbolizes pristine nature for me. It is the largest wild mammal in the Dutch forests. The deer is a prey animal. It is a beautiful and great beast, slender. Not only when you observe the animal in nature, but also in contemporary visual culture, the animal feels innocent, clean. The deer is an alter ego.