Maria Smits

ARTIST STATEMENT

How do you explain the world to yourself? This question is the only essential answer I can give to explain the content of my work. I create sculptures, drawings, and etchings and have been invited to create works “in situ” at various locations in the Netherlands, Germany, and the US.

Concepts such as hierarchy, morality, emancipation, and sexuality play a significant role in the selection of my subjects.

My work is raw, unpolished, and sometimes confrontational and provocative. By playing with reversals and ambiguities in my (visual) language, I depict my personal motivations and beliefs. It is characteristic of me to write the word ‘dog’ in English, then to conclude that it is the reverse of ‘God’.

The Installation 11000+, drawing as performance, an installation consisting of 120 drawings from 2015, is based on a painting by Lucian Freud and a chilling newspaper photo. This drawing performance—wherein I attempted to merge 120 pairs of seemingly incompatible, opposite images—has become a significant cornerstone in my work.

At the time, the impetus for creating this work was the war in Syria, where more than 11,000 children had already perished. It is a bitter reality that the same atrocities are repeating themselves and are once again relevant.

During the exhibition at KunstApart Gallery, drawings from this series will be a significant part of the exhibition.

• For more information about this specific work, I refer to the text by Michael van Hoogenhuyze, published in the book “Sonate 11000+: Drawing as Performance.”