I am interested in bodies. I see the body as an instrument with which you generally gain common, but sometimes extremely rare, experiences that generate a certain unique output. I am interested in how the connections between experiences, thoughts and actions arise and how this is felt and visible through the body. The ‘invisible’ dialogue in the body prior to appearing in the world as an acting body has my attention.
It is very political to be a body that you can adjust and manipulate like an instrument. Cultural attitudes influence the observable. To what extent are you allowed to feel what you perceive? Can you feel something that has no name yet? It is a political choice to use the body to break convention and reshape the meaning of and relationship to the world around us.
The body is, as it were, an imprint in the outer world of an inner process. I find it fascinating how the body makes that inner process visible through posture, shape, presence, behavior. I love the body as a shell, witness and imprint of that process.
Conflicting experiences tempt me to investigate and to stretch what can be felt. Like the relief I experienced when I was told that the child in my womb would not be viable. And immediately afterwards the shame of my relief. Speaking of conventions.
In the past year, my research has been strongly influenced by the birth of a non-living child. This event brought me to an ambiguous area where both loss and relief had a place. An area where ‘the inversion of that which is real’ also exists. It is a uterine area where things are still undecided.
In my work it is about an inconvenience, an insolvability, a contradiction and the attempt. It’s about the space between things. In this case it was a classic agency issue; ‘To what extent do I have control over what happens to me?’, ‘Do I want that control?’, ‘What happens if I have no control?’.
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.
