How do you describe your own art practice?
My work is about common or everyday life phenomena which are at the same time simple and complex. I’m interested in opening them up by mostly looking at their psychological/historical dimensions. I’m proposing a narrative which goes beyond the common sense of reading those phenomena and which exposes their mechanisms. How the work is installed in space becomes an integral part of it.
What was your first experience with art?
Funnily enough, it was in school, through a new arts teacher, we got. Before him, art projects at school were mostly an execution of an idea our teacher might have had some years ago and that had been repeatedly assigned to pupils so that you would already know ahead of time what you were going to draw or paint in a particular grade. It felt dry, bureaucratic and boring. The new teacher would create new tasks for us, together with us. The creative process would already start by formulating the question and of course, he’d introduce us to art that was about ideas rather than a technique.
What is your greatest source of inspiration?
Buildings and places. I like being physically exposed to a defined space, defined by architecture or simply by a certain use of the place. I like imagining stories or accessing history through those buildings and places.
What do you need in order to create your work?
The needs are mostly different each time and it’s a great part of the work to find out what they are, what the piece needs. Being in a bubble does help for filtering your needs.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a new film about fabric, playing around presence and absence. Otherwise, I’m preparing a new book with Atlas Projectos around the origin of houseplants which is related to my photo series “Tristes Tropiques”.
What work or artist has most recently surprised you?
The musical scores as part of “Life in the Folds” by Carlos Amorales at this years’ Venice Biennial.
