BIOGRAPHY

Born on 20/09/1970 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), I am a resident in Catalonia (Spain) since 2004.


At the age of 13, I followed my father’s love for photography and started experimenting and developing my photographic imagination and skills.

Based on my training as a painter and photographer, I have been participating in exhibitions since 1995 and I now mainly work on layered photographic collages. 



ART (STATEMENT)


In 1995 I graduated at Painting and Photography at the AKI Fine Arts Academy and in 1997 I became a Master of Fine Arts at the Post-academy Sandberg Institute in The Netherlands.

In 1998 I was a Master in research at the Melbourne University in Australia. Since then I have done several courses to expand my knowledge and craft.



What keeps me connected to myself and connected to the world, is engaging my creative mind: making connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways of communicating.

I keep my eyes busy and collect and make photographs every day. Lately, I have added to this collection ‘objets trouvés’ (natural or discarded objects found by chance) and objects that have been passed on for generations in my family.


I bring these photographs and objects with me during long walks and with nature as my backdrop, I play with the flat images that I cut out, tear apart and reassemble, I then add the bulky objects to these collages and photograph them, before disassembling the assemblages.


This allows me to create imagined realities and impossible sculptures only visible through the camera’s eye. As easy as it is to manipulate virtually any aspect of an image, I never alter my analog optical illusions with digital editing.


Automatism drives my work, as I incorporate spontaneous associations and coincidence, and welcome alienating outcomes. Disorientation and confusion help me to blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. I aim to make the spectator question what they see.


ACCIÓ SOCIAL i EDUCACIÓ


I can hardly separate my own art from my work as an artist and photographer to facilitate creative spaces where people can relate through art, allowing barriers to be transcended and difficulties to be overcome.

I have been participating in exhibitions for 25 years and have always worked as an art educator in different fields. I see art as a space for personal expression and development, meeting and social participation.


Based on didactic trainings for artists, since 1999 I have worked as an art educator in The Netherlands and in Catalonia, where I have designed educational projects for schools, museums and servicecenters for socio-educational intervention, so that people of all ages can learn through art and culture about social issues.


In a group, artistic creation allows people to relate through art, and at an individual level to contact with the repressed, barriers, with stereotypes and social stigmas, in a very subtle way.


Artistic expression helps us to discover skills and talents and put them at the service of society, we can use our imagination to play with our own limits and overcome them without risk, in a space of creation and fiction.


My recent training includes Visible Thinking Skills and Social innovation maker principles and I have just started an artistic socio-educational project with young people with a high risk of social exclusion.


Currently I am doing a Postgraduate at the University of Barcelona: ‘Art for social transformation, social inclusion and community development: Artistic Mediation’.