Vanessa Jane Phaff
analytisch - lichaam - conceptueel - performance - schilderen
In my work I investigate how Eros structures power and how power structures influence erotic life. I situate these themes in the inner worlds of children/young adolescents: interpersonal interactions may be highly precarious. Paintings and collages based on outline drawings explore external and internal boundaries and shifting identities. Emotional meanings are conveyed through body postures, physical interactions between human bodies or interactions between the body and (movable) structures like doors and windows or similarly highly charged objects like beds and tables.
Through collage and reproduction bodies can regenerate or rise again: the ultimate transgression of boundaries. By merging different storylines/motives, points of view are reversed, characters become unsilenced. This handling of the intertextual, (deliberately) misapprehending primary sources, opposes the harmful one-sidedness of the Western canon and represents the experience of children who on the one hand still lack knowledge, on the other had to grow up too fast.
