The artist is an organism like any other.
Francis Ponge
Since I am active as an artist, I have spent thousands of hours working as an art model. This is not properly the subject of my work, but I gradually got aware of the weight of these hours, their influence on what I see, how I think, my way of being in the world, and thus on the images I make.
My point of view is not that of an objectified woman claiming the status of a subject. Rather, it is that of a thing among other things. Completely still, I feel one with an inanimate world, and take notice of its aliveness. Words as ‘objects’ or ‘subjects’ are of no relevance here. Instead, I decide to take inanimate things as equals, and to assume different viewpoints as an artist.
I make images I feel sympathy with, however different they are from the human form. These images are based on elements of the life class, such as casts, skeletons or natural objects, sometimes combined with details of the human body. These things tend to feel closer to me than the images of me produced in the life class.
However, the academic sense of proportion shaped my way of thinking, and I started to quantify my presence in the surrounding space. How many times do I need to breathe in to create my own volume? Can I take my own skin surface as an ideal format for two-dimensional works? I pondered these questions while posing, and implemented them in my studio.
By now, I am placing my body-proportioned works back into the contexts where I imagined them: the few academic studios still in activity. I install my sculptures and works on paper in these places, perform among them, and document our togetherness through stereoscopic photography. The resulting series explores different forms of merging with a place, as imagined from a model’s contemplative viewpoint.
In short, what I wish to represent is the aliveness of a motionless world, where attempts to mastery change into a more empathetic and reciprocal relation to things. Rather than modifying the world, I want the world to modify me.