Series of works, 2022
The works shown below were developed during the residency of Stichting Destination Unknown at the Heilige Hartkerk (Sacred Heart Church) in Venlo, NL. The building of a Catholic church, a building currently out of use that will be soon turned into apartments, had a great influence on my working process there.
All the works emerged from objects and materials found in the current situation of the church itself. My intervention in these, inweave the materiality and the meaning providing a moment to review conditions and behaviours related to the exercise of the Christian Catholic faith. Nowadays, these conditions and behaviours tend to leave behind a feeling of awkwardness as the religious influences gradually change or fade out of the modern, western society. Τhe title It Still Is What It Is indicates the state of the works and at the same time, they generate a parallel space within a pause of their original ritualisation.
The way we give meaning to things and actions and the way, we again, take this meaning away reveals the absurdness of the original intention. Art can question this but at the same time art as well, is a human activity strongly related to meaning. Maybe the roots of how we perceive art, are not so far away from how we also perceive religion.
From the moment the artist creates the artwork, it becomes almost sacred and the way this artwork gets experienced, it becomes almost a ritual.
Press (dutch)
Interview by Valerie Van Holten for Destination Unknown
https://open.spotify.com/episode/09LOiBms68wnOeWNR1ZOs3?si=4e16f1452c0142f3
prie-Dieu (Prayer chair) - 2022
Untitled - 2022
Cents - 2022