World Wide Weep

Nara Nicoles‘ work is based on a merging of visual and material elements of disparate backgrounds to create one visual space; be it a painting, an installation, or a digital collage. Her work represents the present through her lens but is composed of the past, cultural traditions, religious symbols, family, and the visual language of the place she comes from, the Dominican Republic.

Born in East London and based now in The Hague, Ruby Lee’s work is inspired by the history and theory of image and media. She reflects through painting and film the hierarchy of both women in society and the pictorial methods used to tell their stories. Massively influenced by Hito Stereryl’s ‘In Defence of The Poor Image’, she reflects on the artist’s digital insights in a more analogue way. She uses paper, paint, and glue to respond to ‘a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG’. Who decides what is a ‘Poor Image’ and why? Is the Oil Painting then the ‘richest’ image of them all?

Max Van Olffen’s work exists between familiar and alien, tangible and immaterial, functional and decorative. A fundamentally human obsession with materiality, with its connotations and implications, is central to the work. The cult of creation. The dig for the truth. A ritualistic devotion to the materials that make up the world. Cobbled together ceremonial objects and souvenirs of an ancestral practice are smashed together to both imitate and expand on the endless pile of our creative output. It relates meaning taken out of context and contextualized meaninglessness.

One of the corners of the living room is now a stage. A dollhouse with a kitchen and a bed, ponies roaming free in the garden, a fallen hero hiding behind the corner, and a dramatic end waiting to happen (“Barbie Dreamhouse”). Seeking to address the unpredictability of the now and the future Livia Claesson uses the playfulness of childhood as a means of navigating her understanding. In confronting the confusion and uncertainty we face as adults, it can be helpful to approach them from the perspective of a child. “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” -Albert Einstein