Maike Hemmers

I look at the world around me with a discering awareness of how it is shaped by different forces – at once oppressing and supportive in very different ways, often simultaneously. My practice is guided by somatic learning, movement practices and affective abstraction. I am interested in how we are effected and moved, and in how to materializes these experiences in my artistic practice. I come towards a work by exploring methodologies of tracing phenomonolgical experience: spiritual practices, somatic and participatory theater techniques, workshop facilitations.

Drawing is my primary language of affects, and I have often used textile objects and installation to extend their vibrations into a space. I am curious how and if a drawing can be something that changes us –emotionally and structurally– from the ripples of the act of making, to the moment of perceiving it.

I approach installation as a whole-body experience, thinking of how our selves are effected on different levels. I believe in the radical power of softness and the lasting change of accountable love, and I see these as forces as powerful as other forms of resistance.

Our inner and subjective world is interlaced in a collective net of experience. I access this field through themes of togetherness such as play, queerness, and, most recently, portals of change. I situate my work in dialogue with artists such as Heidi Bucher, Rosemary Mayer, and Emma Kunz, and often collaborate with facililtators, designers and artists, among them Savannah Theis, Marleen de Puydth, Karen Huang and Olga Micińska.

Photo: flora valeska woudstra