I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts St. Joost in Breda and finished my masters at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. I have taken part in a number of residency programs including the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (2011/2012) in Amsterdam. My practice encompasses video art, installation art, performance art, sculpture and photography, exploring different aspects of the psychology and inherent conflicts between our rational and primitive self. My work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; De Appel, Amsterdam; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Kunsthall Oslo; 33rd Sao Paolo Biennale; National Museum, Oslo; LIAF Biennale, Lofoten, and the 5th Moscow Biennale.
By juxtaposing the everyday with the surreal, and the cultivated with the instinctive, I aim to address and blur the divisions between these traditionally binary fields. In order to question this dichotomy, I place day-to-day concerns within surreal and often uncanny settings within my artistic work; concerns that simultaneously play out as endearing, humorous, painful and sad. The urgency in working with these issues stem from my belief that these binaries are intimately connected to how we react to the material world around us and to how we deal with it. It is this separation that is at the core of our existence as human beings within a society; often leading to inner conflicts relating to having “good” or “bad” ethics and separating “moral” understanding from - what is thought of as - “primitive” drives. By closely observing this division, it becomes clear that it is not just an intellectual construct but an active agent in shaping our contemporary condition.
Our daily lives are filled with routine actions that, on the surface, seem insignificant. Yet, these banal activities are punctuated by moments of profound awareness—awareness of the vastness of the universe, the fragility of the planet, and the intricate workings of our own minds. This contrast between the smallness of our daily routines and the enormity of the forces that shape our world is a central theme in my work. I am particularly interested in how these moments of awareness can disrupt our sense of normalcy, forcing us to confront the deeper questions that lie beneath the surface of our everyday lives.
From the proliferation of misinformation to the existential threats posed by climate change, from the microscopic intricacies of our gut flora to the macroscopic realities of drone warfare and the banality of consumer choices—these issues converge in a cacophony of excess and scarcity, of meaning and meaninglessness. Through the use of humor, alienation and absurdity, I want to disrupt the viewer's sense of reality, forcing them to confront the strangeness within the ordinary. This dislocation serves as a metaphor for the fragmented nature of modern life, where the lines between reality and fiction, truth and illusion, are increasingly blurred, leaving us to navigate a world that is at once familiar and profoundly strange.