Research Catalogue

I’m a committed anti-political artist.

My oeuvre comprises either bodies created through a variety of techniques or classical motifs that are treated as bodies. For me, politics (and especially the politics of religion) concern the way in which bodies are defined and manipulated by fear. The rejection of this is based on a strict Calvinist upbringing where - rather than being a natural part of the human condition - desire through images, physical pleasure and nudity belongs to the dark side of humanity, to the “reign of darkness”. In this climate of moral bigotry and basic hypocrisy, one must suppress the wish to show or see what is “doomed”, “cursed” or quite simply inconvenient.

 I believe that this “reign of darkness” constitutes the betrayal of tolerance and true innocence. To exorcise this, I create images that are supremely corporeal. Hence, for me a particular room, space or landscape is always the scene of a crime rather than a romanticised place of comfort, as propagated by the politics of commerce. Similarly, eroticism in my work is always accompanied by its twin: death.