About Bregje
Bregje Horsten, graduated in 2004 from the AKV St.Joost art academy in Breda. She graduated with Honors, cum laude, in 2007 from the Academy of Visual Arts in Tilburg. She was a teacher at the athenaeum of 2College and the Art Academy for Visual Arts Tilburg. She also graduated with Honors, cum laude, at the Master of Visual Arts and Post-Contemporary Practice at St.Joost Master Institute of Visual Cultures. She has exhibitions in galleries and museums in the Netherlands and abroad. With a background in painting, Bregje's practice deals with the representation of the female body and the feminine in our society, through the exploration of different medias and materials; including sculptures of living bio-materials as body bacterias.
I work with material that is alive and performing
I paint, sculpt and grow sculptures of the female body and make these sculptures interact with living organisms. I create drawings and sculptures that are alive. This way I created a mutual relationship of abstract and organic encounters; an interconnection of abstract worldly concepts and biologically growing organisms.
The relationship of nurture and fragility I enter into with these living materials say something about the artistry in relation to the world within it functions.
I had to take precarious circumstances into account when creating and growing the material. This vulnerability underlines the stories that I visually wanted to tell, which are also complex, full of contradictions and fragile. Also, the fact that you can document it, but not always keep the artwork, makes it performative and ephemeral.
Visually, I like to explore images of bodies that seem to have been taken over by fungus. There are references that are reminiscent of a body, of life and of death.
Working with these life forms, sometimes harvested from my own body, I go beyond the idea of singularity, but create ideas that are multiples. This is a form of resistance, because it creates images in which we can see ourselves as masse in relation to the environment around us. Here we can enter a new way of thinking about ourselves, the bodies we have, our relationships with our environment, social, ecological, cultural and biological. We are more than our bodies, we are more than human, we are a collective of life that connects with all other collectives of life. In these deep and complex structures of being we can sculpt a future that revolves around inclusion and care. With the creation of new life, a new birth - on our own terms - a way to pay attention to the multiplicity, not the singularity of our future.
I work with material that is alive and performing
I paint, sculpt and grow sculptures of the female body and make these sculptures interact with living organisms. I create drawings and sculptures that are alive. This way I created a mutual relationship of abstract and organic encounters; an interconnection of abstract worldly concepts and biologically growing organisms.
The relationship of nurture and fragility I enter into with these living materials say something about the artistry in relation to the world within it functions.
I had to take precarious circumstances into account when creating and growing the material. This vulnerability underlines the stories that I visually wanted to tell, which are also complex, full of contradictions and fragile. Also, the fact that you can document it, but not always keep the artwork, makes it performative and ephemeral.
Visually, I like to explore images of bodies that seem to have been taken over by fungus. There are references that are reminiscent of a body, of life and of death.
Working with these life forms, sometimes harvested from my own body, I go beyond the idea of singularity, but create ideas that are multiples. This is a form of resistance, because it creates images in which we can see ourselves as masse in relation to the environment around us. Here we can enter a new way of thinking about ourselves, the bodies we have, our relationships with our environment, social, ecological, cultural and biological. We are more than our bodies, we are more than human, we are a collective of life that connects with all other collectives of life. In these deep and complex structures of being we can sculpt a future that revolves around inclusion and care. With the creation of new life, a new birth - on our own terms - a way to pay attention to the multiplicity, not the singularity of our future.