I’m a proud mother of trash babies and I’m expecting to birth some new ones pretty soon. This silly goofy blogpost will be about my recent expositions and some coming projects. I am happy and excited, yayyyy
Expo(sure)
Get my pun? HAHAHA. It is quite easy to understand why an artist's wants to do expositions. It’s like a concert for a musician.
I want my art to be seen beyond social media, friends, or university. I have been applying to expositions, a few magazines and even trying to get into bookfairs, so I can spread my art, meet artists, and do all this in person. Social media is fun and effective, but nothing beats meeting artists in person sharing your art together. I really want to never stop doing this, even though I have been very busy, I have also never felt more fulfilled and like I am doing the right thing with my life and talents. Overall, I would say what I want to reach with more in person exposure is sharing my art and seeing it take on its own life in other people’s hands, so it finally feels like my art isn’t just mine anymore and it has a role and purpose beyond me. I hope to do more expos, more bookfairs, more festivals, events, magazines, and anything I can get my hands on MWAHAHAHA, I mean tihihihihi
QueerCo "Queer makes Queer"
I had the honour to be part of the “Queer makes Queer” one day exposition with many amazing artists. It was my first real expo experience, and it was so much fun.
I had an amazing time with everyone who exhibited and who came, and I was so happy to see that people enjoyed what I made. I also made a collaborative zine with the visitors that day, which I will share soon (once I clean my room and find the zine under the piles of clothes and drawings on my floor) Overall I really had an exciting and verry happy-making time so please follow this link to discover all the amazing artists I have had the honour to exhibit with that day (thanks to them and the organisers for being such nice and fun people)
May I tie my shoelace to yours
This ACTIVE expo gave to me my trash babies, a lot of inspiration, motivation and a lot of fun memories.
The core idea of the term active expo is that we started with an empty room and within 1 week we create art, and the public can come and watch/interact with us during the day. It was infact to go against usual expositions which are result and product based, so ours was about the process and playfulness within the process.
I am very grateful to have been a part of this alongside other art students that I have gotten to know during this experience and learned a lot from. The project was non-hierarchical, so we all had responsibilities, and this worked really well, because all the work wasn’t just put on one person, but we all had our own important tasks to do that kept the project and us well and alive. I still remember the lunches and dinners we had fondly, it felt like a little trip somewhere, even though it was just a few biking minutes (I’m so Dutch) away from my apartment.
Overall, it was such an inspiring, fun, playful, artistic and positive environment where we encouraged playing around with hula hoops, jumping ropes, bubbles and our artistic process. Seeing everyone be so eager to create and creating alongside each other or together was so encouraging and really overshadowed the fact how tiring the whole experience really was. We stayed there from morning till evening and even though we all agreed this was a very inspiring time and that we were having so much fun, we all also agreed that we are verYYYY tired, so I hope we all could rest since then and are recharging well. From this project I leave wih a lot of motivation, confidence, gratitude, new friends, amazing memories and two trash babies!!
You can check out all about the project on our Instagram!
Trash Babies
As I said during the “May I tie my shoelace to yours?” active expo, I ended up turning trash into my trash babies.
It was such a super fun process and I just let the process be the main driving part of the project, so I didn’t sketch anything and just let the moment and mistakes and successes decide how the result will look. The fact I turned trash into these cute creepy little creatures is also very gratifying and has made me think how I could turn so much unwanted trash into little babies with stories and give them a new life. It really opened my eyes to so many possibilities and within this new sculpture series and universe of my trash babies. I definitely want to convey an ecological message about our endless amounts of trash that we produce and just dump somewhere. I have been deeply concerned in general for the future but specifically climate change and all the things that are leading us towards a future where the planet becomes more and more unliveable for us. This future is something I want to avoid first and foremost so that my nephews and all the kids now have the chance of living on a healthy planet.
I feel like by making these recycled cute and creepy characters I am making some sort of small message through a silly medium that is more approachable for everyone but also has a playful childlike quality to it. It is all a process, so I hope I can continue to develop this idea and I am aware that so far these little creature really aren’t going to make any huge impact on any type of discourse about climate change, but I am on the route to create art that does create more of an impact, I believe in that wholeheartedly.
On the horizon
I am excited o announce that till June I will be part of two more expos!
Meanwhile I will continue to work on my poetry zines, my trash babies, my illustrations, my art and myself. I am very proud and at peace with the path I am on and hope to continue like this for the rest of my life.
Thank you for reading this blogpost and thank you for caring about what I have to say. If I can let u know one thing, then please remember that you set the standard for how the world and others see and treat you. Please respect yourself and value yourself! This also goes for your art. I believe in you and your potential so much, but that only matters if you also believe in yourself, so please do, my cutie patootie babes tihihi…this is very intimate…are we gonna kiss o.o jk HAHAHA
BYEEEE, love urself pls!!!!
PS.: The pic may be a spoiler for a project I am working on ...
Comments