Female Hands © 2023 edited photos 30 x 45 cm
The female body is a subject that has occupied me throughout my career. I studied sculpture at the Rietveld academy in the 1990s and my teachers and students at the time were all men. This was normal, but I regularly experienced it as complicated, but it often also served as an inspiration for new work to be created, as is the case now.
The concept of the Female Gaze is what I will apply in various museums of ‘old’ art, including the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, museum M HKA in Antwerp, Kunstmuseum Basel. But also smaller museums such as the museum Martena in Franeker. I zoom in on the women’s hands in paintings there.
In search of women’s hands at a time when female artists were almost invisible.
I will enlarge and edit the zoomed photos. These will hang on the wall. I make mobiles from other enlarged photos after they have been edited; edited with scratches, perforations, waving and rubbing with pastel, these are my repetitions of actions. Searching and scanning the photo paper to ultimately transform into a mobile that casts its shadow on the walls where the enlarged hands will enter into secret communication with each other.
This project will be available for viewing in the spring of 2024.
This project is supported by: CultureFund, AmarteFund and JaapHartenFund