The Hague and Spain based visual artist Sanne Maes (1974) studied Fine Arts at The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Maes is a member of various artists association and has exhibited in museums, galleries and artist-run spaces, amongst other places.

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 or a painting. The work appears as a painting, which has been enlivened by motion.

Maes started making self-portraits during her study at the Royal Academy of Art. 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, for our connection to the world around us. As humans we are constantly mirroring our environment, in search for our identity.

"By projecting myself on top of a drawing or a painting, I identify with the image I coincide with. For me it's about looking for similarities, but also for the differences. I try to adjust, to fit in, but sometimes I don't and this creates friction."

Her latest series of works, Lost identity, consists of video portraits on computer and television screens; Portraits half hidden behind Rorschach-inspired inkblots. The Rorschach inkblot test is a psychological test to assess the personality of an individual, it involves the evaluation of a subjects response to ambiguous inkblots. The test is based on the human tendency to project interpretations and feelings on, in this case, inkblots. The person in the video is half hidden behind the inkblots, the identity is hard to determine. The person moves slowly, trapped in an increasingly repetitive movement. All this plays down on computer and television screens, media that have a major impact on our daily lives.

 

 

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