Sanne Maes – VideoArt – The Netherlands
The Hague and Spain based visual artist Sanne Maes studied Fine Arts at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague & The Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.
Maes is a member of different artists association and has exhibited, amongst other places, in museums, galleries and artist-run spaces. In between her two studies Maes travelled around the world, for one year on a motorbike around India, for one year in a campervan around Australia and for two years around South East Asia with a backpack. Traveling is a source of inspiration.
The work of Maes consists mainly of video installations, works composed layer upon layer; video images projected on top of another image. Usually a moving self-portrait that coincides with the image it is projected on. This image could be a drawing, a painting or an object. In the video images an isolated moment in time and movement play an important role. The videos are always very short, maximum of one minute, and by looping them Maes creates a replay of a moment in time. This way the portrait is trapped in a repetitive motion, locked in itself, locked in the moment, and by projecting it on a drawing or painting, trapped in the image. The work appears as a painting, which has been enlivened with motion. The movement (the living) on the still (the lifeless) is an indication of our mortality.
Maes also makes anatomical studies in video installations, drawings and paintings. Works which concentrate on the form and structure of the internal parts like bones and organs from humans and animals, their anatomy. Looking for similarities between the ‘building plan’ of organisms.
The theme of the transience and metamorphosis is present in all her work.
Maes started making self-portraits during her study at the Art Academy in The Hague. The choice to use herself as a subject in her work was mainly a practical one. Without needing someone else, she is able to experiment freely without any limits. The work does not aim to portray the artist herself, but is an artistic research on the modern human and his ambivalent self-image.
In this time of self-reflection and selfies, we seem to lose our identity. We are looking for the boundaries of our physical body, death, to our connection to the world around us. As humans we are constantly mirroring our environment, in search for our identity.
“By projecting myself, I identify with the image I coincide with in the projection. For me it’s about the similarities, but also the differences. I try to adjust, to fit in, but sometimes I don’t and this creates friction.”