Zwaantje Kurpershoek (1998, NL) is a visual artist who intertwines
found, existing, and imagined stories with physical materials. Her
work explores the potential connections between the things around us
and our perceptions, using sculptures, paintings, and installations as
her medium. She introduces characters with specific traits, which she
calls “players”; a way to emphasize their agency as they take
their shape through the available stories and materials.
Her work touches on themes such as mathematics, philosophy, and
identity, often playing with the ambiguity of so-called opposites:
good vs. bad, inside vs. outside, and the other vs. the familiar.
Through fiction, she approaches these dualities from different
perspectives, investigating the (potential) relationships between
things.
“During my residency at het Wilde Weten, I plan to work from the
perspective of ‘Deler,’ a character exploring the concept of ‘delen.’
In Dutch, ‘delen’ encompasses both ‘sharing’ and ‘dividing.’ This
duality fascinates me, as it may seem to suggest that something must
be divided into parts to be shared. This (false) idea would imply that
sharing inherently involves a loss of ownership: if you were to share
a cake, you have less left for yourself. However, in many cases, the
opposite occurs. For example, sharing knowledge or ideas can create
added value and, in a sense, ‘multiply.’
Using my own logic, I intend to playfully explore the stories and
abstract themes of dividing and multiplying through ‘Deler,’ making
figurative paintings.”
