Artist Statement

Trained as a jewelry designer, I constantly find myself returning to the definition of jewelry. If you look at this definition, you’ll find that it has a purely decorative function and is worn on the body and that’s all... Without the body, there is no need for jewelry. The body is the object of jewelry.

My work uses various materials and media to approach and objectify the human body: color photos, for example, are combined with synthetic materials such as silicone, hinting at skin. Every time, the body is enlarged and rendered in different materials and, by doing so, reduced to an abstraction.

‘The Human Thing’ (2019) is a series of sculptures made of photos that I rolled up so that not everything is ever visible. The rolls signify pedestals, or even altars: in any case, things normally used to display something on top of. But these pedestals are empty, and wrapped around them are images of female bodies, photographed close-up, with the focus on body parts generally experienced as sexual. If you look closely, small personal characteristics can be seen: a birthmark, a painted nail, part of a gesture. These features reveal a personality behind the skin, and a casualness with which the body is treated. By photographing these bodies almost like a product photographer would, the ‘sexiness’ is drained from the work.

Being a woman, sexual objectification is not unknown to me. Like most, I find it reprehensible and derogatory but, being trained as a jewelry designer, I also realize that the body decorates itself exactly to be seen. The division of roles between men and women is ages old and has created stereotypes: men are powerful, women are submissive. I refuse to see it that way: to me, the roles that women sometimes assume are evidence that the female body also has power.

Within the shape of my works, which occasionally hints at functionality, as well as within my material choices, and compositions of sculptures, I investigate exactly this power struggle, and I don’t necessarily choose which side wins. The curtain has my body printed on it. There is a play going on between control and submission: moving the curtain across the rails, who is the one most in control? How aggressive does it feel moving a body back and forth to where you want it? How much of the body is visible and how much is shown? As a viewer you are simultaneously the attacker, and the attacked.

The goal within my works is not to portray active aggression, but rather a passive kind of aggression; the kind that creeps under the skin.