As an artist I work with pastel drawings and soft sculptures as my main tools to understand and portray how affects, feelings, and relationships move through a body. I research and use spiritual and somatic practices — the connection of mind, body, and soma, its energy field. With the practice of connecting somatically inner awareness, the physical body and artistic works, our common ability of deep listening and shared signaling is manifested. By examining the effect of color through drawing, I explore different practices of self-examination that lead to an embodied consciousness.
This deep becomes palpable - Installation of drawings and soft sculptures, Kunstinstituut Melly, 2022; Drawings: Textile, paper, pastels, 170 x 240 cm; Sculptures: Textile, natural dyes, kapok, cedar bark, cherry pits, sage, 40 cm and 180 x 250 cm
The work is based on inner developments, whether subconscious, bodily, or energetic, to support emergent understanding and orientation. The process has been supported by a series of somatic ‘process work’ sessions facilitated by the artist and process- worker Savannah Theis. Related to this, Hemmers invited a group of close friends to attend a workshop facilitated by Theis, which went on to shape the installation of sculptures on view.
The sculptures are produced together with textile designer Karen Huang, and can be encountered variously, through scent, sight, and touch. Photo: Kristien Daem
This deep becomes palpable - Kunstinstituut Melly, 2022
Color Body Scans - Soft pastel on paper, different dimensions, 2021–; As part of my process I apply a somatic and subjective color theory to understand color in relation to mental and physical impulses. Through a mental body-scan I determine the changing meaning of color in each body part, and keep notes of the mental images that arise. These scans form the basis of many of my works, for which I use the color pallet determined in my body on a specific day. I develop a work by expanding one specific color and its meaning: where this color physically takes place, and the stories arising from it.
Untitled - Soft pastels on paper, 63 x 86 cm; Photo: Charlotte Brand
Desire digests what moves it - Four out of six pastel drawings on paper, 63 x 86 cm cm, Fictioning Comfort, MAMA, NL, 2020. The drawings of abstract and vibrating matters connect to the video work in the digital exhibition of Fictioning Comfort. The drawings are an expression of the affective motions that lead to making the cushions and the video work. https://fictioningcomfort.space/desire-digests-what-moves-it/
Desire digests what moves it No. 4 - Soft pastels on paper, 63 x 86 cm; Photo by Charlotte Brand
Desire digests what moves it - Screenshot of video work, 10:02, 2020. V. Curandi and B.G.Yalım engaged with a set of ‘cushions’ at home, based on a set of scores that aimed to bring attention to the layered relations between the performing body, the ‘cushions’ and the domestic. The interactions with the unconventional cushions aim to re-direct the historical and expected positions our bodies take at home. https://fictioningcomfort.space/desire-digests-what-moves-it/
No kitchen ever belongs to me - The publication follows a research period inside De Kiefhoek museum apartment in 2019 (Rotterdam, NL) alongside Ian Clewe. The essay unpacks the decisions the architect JJP Oud and the municipal took to build the complex for the working class, and draws lines to current decisions made in the city ‘management’. The critical study is interlaced with descriptions of interaction with the children who came to visit and spend time drawing along side me. The photographs were taken at night inside the kitchen of the museum apartment of drawings made during the day. The kitchen of De Kiefhoek is an example of gendered division and build structural opression. It was build extra small so that ‘the working class would not use it as a livingroom’. as was deemed unproper by the ruling class. https://issuu.com/maikehemmers/docs/mh_nokitchen_digital_single_wimages
