BdB: Growing up, I attended a religious boarding school, an experience I often reflect upon in my process, especially when I am working with bodies. Very often, it relates to suffering, anger and fear, all elements that you often find in religious art. But now I’ve found another way to express myself, sometimes with soft materials, but not the ones that you really want to have. They are falling apart. They are destroyed by nature, by time. It’s more symbolic of the way I feel towards our society. When I was working with blankets in the 90s, it was a material that through which people would access my work, as they found the colours and the patterns inviting. Because of this, they could deal with the topics at hand.
Back then, when the naked body was covered by blankets, it allowed for a sense of shelter and comfort. These days that’s all gone. We’ve promised too much that we cannot realise, and the blanket has failed. That’s the reason why I put the blankets in my courtyard for months, for it to lose all strength, colour, pattern and integrity. Hung up on the wall, they are now disintegrated and falling apart, in repetition among the layers upon layers.