Cage

1989 |155 x 100 cm | iron rods, silk organza, chain.
Cage was performed in Paris in 1989, at Vitrine Hortense Stael in a disused marble factory rue de Charonne. The public could enter the courtyard and peer through partially obstructed windows to see the hanging cage containing a naked woman, covered by the red curtain. Her breathing was recorded and transmitted to the courtyard, giving an unsettling intimate expérience to this voyeristic offering.

Flight

1991 - 2014 | dimensions… etc | glass, silicone, feathers, bodyglue.
Flight was performed a year later again in Paris with Vitrine Hortense Steal in conjunction with the FIAC. The feathers are died flesh color and applied to the body with spécial glue forming a second skin, the glass house is made to my body’s measurements when in the smallest possible fœtal position. The performance took place in the marble factory again, this time inside. The space was dark except for a light hanging above the glass house with the feather-covered body inside, as if being incubated. After a while the body inside the glass house starts to move and lifts the glass roof off, stands up and steps out of the glass house, feels its feathers and starts to shed them by pulling them off, this ritual of plucking the feathers off continues untill none are left. The body is now naked except for remaining down, like a bare chick. The feathers are carefully gathered and put into the glass house and the roof put back on top, she walks away. The performance obviously refers to (re)birth, metamorphosis and change, with the issues of confinement and escape présent.This pièce was re-enacted in Museum Van Loon in 2014 as an initiative of Helena Muskens and Quirine Racké, who did an Artist in Residency programme via the Mondriaan Stichting.

Home

1990 - 2014 | 188 x 130 x 173 cm | plywood, carpet, mahogany veneer, oilpaint, varnish, beeswax
Home can be seen as a pièce with or without the performance. It is simply a tower with a little house on top. The house is small, again it fits my body in it’s smallest crouched position, with just enough space to poke my face through the opening. The inside of the little house is carpeted with the same pink carpet from my chilhood bedroom. It refers to my expérience of growing up in a museum. As a child I lived on the top floor of an old historic house, which used to bélong to my family and is now Museum Van Loon. I was an only child and the house is big and it felt very lonely. It also felt very strange to live in such an environment, especially compared to other families. This pièce was also re-enacted in Museum Van Loon in 2014 as an initiative of Helena Muskens and Quirine Racké, who did an Artist in Residency programme via the Mondriaan Stichting.

Taste

2017 | dark, milk and white chocolatés
Taste was a short prelude to a more elaborate project I hope to do in Museum Van Loon one day. It relates to my expérience as a family member and ambassador of this héritage. I cast my lips, eyes, mouth and ears, and made chocolatés of them, thèse I offered to the visitors in my studio, as I plan to offert them to the visitors of the museum. Something to give , something to recieve. There is a tension between the intimacy and possible intrusion of the act of tasting. And of course a little cannibalistic edge as well…