Fernande Bloemen

Next to my studies in Fine Arts, I am doing a Master of Science in Sustainable Finance. Finance is the perfect field to enjoy the irony of people who hope to find a rationalization for their choices but don’t act accordingly. The data show what encourages and discourages us, and how we need to create limitations to live freely. Within economics, I miss general self-reflection and the acknowledgment of true irrationality because even data analysis has explanatory limits.

To me, rationality is a utopia, or possibly a dystopia. I am not completely sure which of those words to use, but I do know, it is the goal of most people around me. Art is a beautiful tool because I can show my thoughts, whilst maintaining the layering and contradictions, instead of aiming for absolute clarity. In my work, I aim to create another world, one that is solely in my mind. A daydream, in which you are invited to be critical and non-critical at the same time to change the viewer’s perspective and look at your world from afar and maybe re-rationalize it someday. I’m interested in the position of people within nature, whether we are part of it or whether we are not, and are almost godlike in our control. I was born on a houseboat in Amsterdam, which grants you the luxury of being both part of the vivid city and separated on a private island. The boat is in a way similar to this in-between state of awareness.

Practically this concept materializes in large artworks, to create a bodily experience and absorb the viewer. My art consists of installations, performances, and most of all spacious drawings. I try to immerse the viewer into the drawing, to allow them to enter a vulnerable in-between world. It is a place where texture and image come together into one. With rice paper, I aim to let nature grasp my drawing freely and let the organic shapes live in my ink paintings.