GALLERY
I SAW A WOLF, AN APPLE AND A GOLDEN EGG
(2021-2025)
I SAW A WOLF, AN APPLE AND A GOLDEN EGG (2023-2025)
In 2018, I had a profound, almost magical experience.
During a performance in which I was covered in paper pulp, I experienced a loss of appearance and identity. This brought me into direct contact with my inner world. In that stillness, the image of a wolf appeared: raw, animalistic, and powerful.
The wolf led me back to the stories of my childhood: fairy tales and myths I intuitively understood as a child and in which I felt free. Stories that have never disappeared but now seem to offer guidance once again.
From that renewed connection, I began to approach my work as an inner archaeologist. In the silence of meditation, I dig layer by layer. Symbols emerge: the egg, the apple, the wolf. Images arising from the collective unconscious, as described by Carl Jung; a universal repository of human experience, symbols, and archetypes.
They carry meanings that go beyond the personal.
In this series, I explore these symbols that surface during my meditations and place them within my own context.
The apple is a charged symbol. It represents fertility, the female body, and creative power, but also carries associations with temptation and sin. In myths and religions, the apple appears repeatedly as a bearer of opposing forces: life and the loss of innocence, abundance and danger. It’s precisely this duality that fascinates me.
In this series, I use the apple and the egg as archetypal images to make the tension between female power and societal expectations tangible.
ME AND WE (2021-2022)
ME AND WE (2021-2022)
Since 2021 I am a mother.
In this work, I take you on a personal journey of becoming a mother; a journey that is as beautiful as it is confronting. I struggle to hold on to my own identity amidst the many roles motherhood demands: caring, nurturing, always being ‘on,’ being strong, carrying, and constantly available for the needs of others. The question arises: who am I still as a person, beyond these endless tasks of motherhood?
In this process, I continually discover new versions of myself, while some parts of my being, even those I deeply love, sometimes seem to be closed off. What moves me is the raw intensity and the unparalleled strength that both the birth of my child and the emergence of motherhood bring with them.
THAT TIME I MET BABA JAGA, 2020-2021
THAT TIME I MET BABA YAGA (2020-2021)
When I moved from a village to the city, I began to experience inner tensions and wasn’t always true to myself. I became curious: how did people in earlier times deal with paralyzing thoughts or inner resistance? What tools did they have?
This question led me to mythology — first to the Greeks, then further into the collective web of ancient stories. I found symbols, archetypes, and figures that reflected the very struggles I was facing. These stories offered insight, not through explanation, but through recognition. They reminded me that transformation is often messy, painful, and necessary.
Baba Yaga became a central figure in this process: the wild woman of the woods, living in a house on chicken legs. A force both terrifying and generous. She tests you. She pushes you beyond reason. And only when you stop asking, start acting, and dare to trust something deeper in yourself; then, maybe, she’ll help you.
This project is an exploration of that inner landscape. Through performance, photography, and symbolic imagery, I engage with discomfort, intuition, and the mythological layers that still shape us. The work does not aim to explain, but to evoke. To invite the viewer into their own forest, their own fire, and perhaps, their own meeting with Baba Yaga.
EXPOSITIES
FASES 2026, KUNSTLIEFDE, UTRECHT
FASES:Er is geen einde en geen begin
31 januari t/m 1 maart, 2026
Zes kunstenaars, zes verhalen, één bijzondere tentoonstelling ter ere van Peter-Paul van der Houven. Via zijn stichting Art Forever regisseert hij sinds 2013 videoportretten van kunstenaars die (o.a.) in Kunstliefde exposeerden. Voor deze tentoonstelling selecteerde hij zes kunstenaars, van wie het nieuwste werk èn een nieuw videoportret getoond wordt. De films van toen, de nieuwe opnames en de kunstwerken zelf laten zien hoe deze makers zich door de jaren heen hebben ontwikkeld. In de tentoonstelling FASES wordt zichtbaar hoe het werk van een kunstenaar nooit stopt: elk einde leidt tot een nieuw begin.
