ARTIST STATEMENT

The structural elements which appear in my work, either as a physical entity or as a mode of operation, have an equivocal relationship to logic and to productivity as inherent traits of a Western capitalist society. They embody an attempt to dissolve the temporal and physical boundaries between a space of intimate vulnerability and the public realm, in order to explore the complex coexistence of personal drives and appropriated behavioural patterns. In a context dominated by digital interactions between people and objects I am interested in the idea of a manifestation of the self as a representation, an enactment which is a virtual after-image of an emotional engagement with embodied experience.

Through sculptural installations, images, video work, and texts I explore the authority of a physical place in an increasingly prevalent democratic landscape of shared online moments. By investigating the specificity of a particular landscape and its inhabitants I retrace the physical connection we have with a place, and through the exploration of its historical narratives I question the politics of remembering and forgetting in the age of globalised media culture.

My most recent work is motivated by the wish to experience a physical place which marks the dividing line between one cultural identity and another. The port city of Odessa on the Black Sea was chosen as a point of enquiry, where I spent a period of time researching the rich synthesis of historical and current events surrounding the area. The city, with one foot in Europe and the other in Russia, became a multi-voiced travelling companion; a narrator sharing her auto-biographical past and presence, her inhabitants providing a living dialogue, her historical ruins forming a background for a semi-fictional narrative and an unreconstituted reflection of an internalised Other.

BIOGRAPHY

Maaike Anne Stevens (1980) was born in the Netherlands and is currently based between Amsterdam and London, where she studied Fine Arts at Central St.Martins College and at Goldsmiths College. Recent exhibitions include a solo show to mark the end of a year-long residency with Acme Studios London and a duo-exhibition as part of the MA Contemporary Curating at the Royal College of Art. She was twice shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize (2010 and 2012) and has executed works with Jealous Gallery London and the London Print Studio, which were shown at the Royal Academy and the Christies Multiplied Fair in 2013. She is currently developing a major sculpture commission for ESA architects for the facade of 26-32 Oxford Street in London, to be completed in 2016. Her work is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum permanent collection.

Maaike is also involved in an ongoing collaborative project with the Chilean artist Maite Zabala Meruane, in which they create site-specific installations which investigate the effect of global online communication through theoretical discourse and the enactment of a material dialogue investigating indigenous mediums and traditions. Their first collaborative work will be shown at The Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton in January 2016.