GUEST ARTIST - IRIS VAN DER ZEE
Residency and exhibition:
Opening hours:
Thursday May 30 (opening): 18:00 - 21:00
Friday May 31: 12:00 - 16:00
Saturday June 1: 12:00 - 16:00
Short description:
As an artist, Iris van der Zee is concerned with the role of cultural objects in the human experience of the past, present and future - and how these change over time. In her series Vessels of Histories, Iris plays with the discrepancy between the original meaning attributed to an image and the interpretation that readers give it years, sometimes even centuries, later. She illustrates this by making paper mache pots, in which she tells new stories through historical images. In the titles of the pots, Iris refers to her personal life, which the combination of images on the pots represent. The new meanings she assigns to the vessels are anecdotal and have titles such as 'The Battle for Maarten', 'Try to catch up with your friends in your 30s' and 'PMS diaries'. This project illustrates how history is a continuous cycle of coding and decoding, of interpreting and reinterpreting events. While Iris has so far reflected on historical pottery in paper mache, she has delved into the medium of ceramics during a four-week residency in the See Lab project space. Here she practiced making hand-shaped ceramic pots and experimented with stencil techniques. From Thursday, May 30 to Saturday, June 1, Iris will hold an Open Studio, where she will show a combination of new paper mache works from the Vessels of Histories series in addition to the studies and experiments created during her residency.
Artist bio:
Iris van der Zee (1993) is a visual artist who lives and works in The Hague. Her practice consists of an interaction between sculpture and photography. As an artist, Iris is concerned with the way in which cultural objects are part of the human experience in the past, present and future - and how these change over time. She is fascinated by how interpretations of historical images change with the times in which the viewer lives. From statues to prints and other cultural objects: all were created at some point with a certain function or idea, but the meaning that people attribute to them today often differs greatly from the original intention of the maker or client. Iris has exhibited her work at Unseen, Unfair and This Art Fair, among others. In 2016 she self-published her artist book 'Statue'. In 2016 Iris graduated from the photography department of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and she completed a master's degree in Cultural Studies at the Art, Culture and Politics course at the University of Amsterdam in 2022.
Supported by: Gemeente Den Haag