WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

We Don't Live Here Anymore
Landscapes and the Post-Apocalypse

The artist makes the invisible visible. He orshe shatters the clichés and narratives used to mask reality.
-Chris Hedges

Thereis a popular thought that it would take less than five hundred years for anuninhabited earth to erase all visible traces of humankind. Civilisation as weknow it will not always look like what it does now. The growingawareness that we are living on an increasingly frail planet will influence ourlives more in unimaginable ways, actually it already has.
Through out the ages, many urban landscapes will be and have beenforgotten. We don't have to look very far into history to see example of manmade landscapes that have become obsolete. Many of these landscapes have had anacute impact on my artistic endeavours.
Researching many examples of these kind of landscapes have been aconsistent source of inspiration for me.
My work is mostly a synthesis of the non-fictional and the fictional,a depiction of a parallel reality that has been left alone by any form of humanactivity. I like exploring the tension between fantasy and reality throughdrawing, sculpture, installation and video.
Mydrawings form the base of my artistic practice, to which I always return todespite my other works. I think I definitely have a clear personal visuallanguage that I use to depict worlds that could exist now, in the future butalso in the possible futures of the past.
With fantasy and imagination there is always the possibility ofachieving what man has dreamed for. If the results don't meet the expectedquality of life anymore, one can always leave again, discard everything, leavebehind the undesired remains and move to new opportunities.
But what would the earth that we leave behind look like?
That is my main incentive and motivates my artistic practise.

Memoryitself is always in a state of decay and ruins can be the one the thing that issemi-permanent and changes far slower than our memories. Ruins enable us toamplify the past.
They idealise the achievements of the past assublime but at the same time there is this ever present melancholy.
Beauty is the encapsulation of this contrastbetween these emotions.

Ibelieve that artists living today are in the interesting position to expertlyreflect on the past, recognise its complexities and all its’ ill maladies.Artist need to see themselves as an integral part of society,  comment on the present and the futureconsidering the complicated times we find ourselves living in today. 
The choice of being an artist itself hasincreasingly become difficult due to ever increasing inequality, schisms inpolitical thinking, crippling austerity, world tragedies and  climate catastrophes. All these factorsthreaten the infrastructures that allow artists to create and even to exist. Ifartists become obsolete then who will leave behind any memories or examples ofimaginations to be seen in the future.
Without these visions howcan we dream of how the future will shape up?
What can we even live for?

The only thing we have is our own fantasy andimagination,  to envision the possibilityof a better world and a more sustainable future.