Lundi 21 Septembre 2015 13:03:31 par Myriam Boudjemia dans Expositions

Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s work develops over the course of her long and many travels. Iceland, China, Bolivia, Canada and Denmark open their vast expanses to the artist, serving as the scene for her inventions. The landscapes she chooses to work in share common traits: distant horizons and arid beauty. Lunar spaces where human presence is rare, and therefore always unusual. Trained in sculpture, the Dutch artist fashions art that draws from installation and performance, a body of work conditioned by her voyages: migration of the author and the object (here, carpets and hats) in foreign lands. Her images are never digitally doctored: everything lies in gestures and construction. Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s work is one of free, whimsical and spontaneous poetry which describes a world feverishly teetering on the brink, torn between immutability and fragility.

Her photographs are documentations of carefully choreographed and staged scenes in locations as diverse as the Bolivian desert, the islands of Madagascar and Canada’s arctic expanses. Hooft Graafland is fascinated by the surreal beauty of these barren landscapes, and uses them as a backdrop to her photographs. In true anthropological fashion she sources the motifs from local mythology.