Blinds determine what we see from the outside, but also from the inside. It affects the world beyond and how we perceive it. They have the ability to conceal and reveal. It is so ordinary and overlooked, but so beautiful if you focus on it. Blinds can remind us that beauty lies within the ordinary. Sense the light, the movement and the small details.
The inanimate in our life can give or tell us something. It is alive and there for us to feel, sense and be amazed by. We have a relationship with the inanimate, and it lies in history, memory, and time. Through time, we become entangled with it. And through time we become part of each other’s story. They are mediators between the inside and outside, and in the in-between are the inanimate as carriers of the story.
Artist statement
The word ‘animate’ has an etymological origin in the Latin ‘anima’ meaning ‘breath of life’. - Oxford dictionary
Deeply influenced by the complex exchange between us, humans, and non-human entities, I research the different layers of our perception through the soul giving of thing. What and how do we relate to these subjects and to space. What do we need to connect to the world around us? How can I rehabilitate the material and thus the objects to discover what beauty lies within?
These ‘things’ to me are non-human entities. Everything and everyone has a soul. Some just need a little help showing it. But what are these non-human entities trying to show or say to us? I try to relate to the things and translate what I recognize as performative in the real world into intimate scenographic environments. I start from the thing. Mostly an object or seemingly banal material, and I look for an entity in this.
Ambities
The drive for this research was to find ways in which humans become aware of their relation with things: the nonhuman environment, in a way that stays close to the nature of the thing. This research enriched my way of thinking and gave a sensitivity to the world around me. It changed my view of the world in that sense, and in fact in every sense enormously. I found out that Scenography provides other perspectives for me and the spectator to look at the world around us.
After two years I can carefully say that I am a detailed scenographer that creates scenes with seemingly overlooked and mundane things. I stage the things to ask for attention and I ask the spectator to see familiar environments in fresh new ways.
In many ways I feel that my research is just beginning. I just touched base with the next step in my research and that is to find out what that next step means. It is time to build a new relationship between humans and non-human entities and how the things can be a mediator in this story.
