Wiebke Zander - On Metamorphosis

My name is Wiebke Zander, I came to the Netherlands 9 years ago. In 2011 I joined art academy St. Joost in Breda. At that moment I did not really know what to expect from this study or how it would influence me, I only knew I had to get in. The main reason for that decision was that being an artist is really the only job that enables me to create something valuable and to keep learning and growing as well as a person and technique wise all my life. In the last year I got better in what I do, but in art there is always  room for improvement.

My work

At the moment I am working on a new series of pictures which is called ‘Metamorphosis’. Metamorphosis is the successor of my graduation project ‘Diktatur der Schönheit’. While DDS is an outraged scream against a society dropping false beauty ideals on us every day, Metamorphosis is way more personal. This project is about sex, longing and love. It is about physical change, spiritual growth and about choices we make or do not make. It’s about society and our role in it, it’s about femininity and masculinity.

I long to make my works humorous because life is already so puzzling. For the new series I did more experimenting with photo collage- and montage techniques then before, which I really love. I use pictures and materials that already exist. I cut out forms that I find beautiful, put them on a table and rearrange them as long as they start to make sense to me. Coincidence plays a certain role in my works. What pictures and forms can I find and where and how does it all fit together in the end? I steal from magazines and glossy’s, from posters and the internet and I use materials that I find on the streets too. It’s all a big mash up, forms, things and cut out body parts that do not really belong with each other get together and become something new and unexpected.

WKNDX

My WKNDX exhibition in Electron (opening this Friday) will be an arrangement of as well older and new works. Photo- montage, collage, objects and found-footage materials will join each other. They will represent a composition of sex, doubt, longing, uncertainty, self improvement, madness and love. I do hope that a lot of people will show up and discuss my works with me or just enjoy to look at it. With my work I want to be able to bring a smile to the viewers faces and maybe think of the familiar feelings that connects all of us.