Artist Statement

An old piece of wood, a page from a book of poetry, a punch card that once controlled a weaving loom — each material comes to me carrying a history. A history I do not want to erase. Traces, wear, damage, and silences are not flaws that ask to be repaired. They are information. They tell us something about what has been, what has disappeared, and what still remains.

I am interested in what exists behind, between, and beneath the visible. Within the everyday lies a network of connections that does not immediately reveal itself: between people and objects, between memory and matter, between use and meaning, between what once functioned and what remains as its trace today. An object carries more than its physical form. It also carries the hands that have touched it, the actions associated with it, the time in which it functioned, and the stories that have become attached to it.

That is why I work slowly. Slowness gives me the opportunity to first look and listen to what a material is already saying, before I touch or alter it. What remains visible? What disappears? Which traces are given meaning, and which are overlooked? And above all: who decides what is allowed to remain visible, and what remains unseen? These are questions I do not seek to resolve. Instead, they form the space in which the work can remain alive and in motion.

My attention often turns towards systems and structures, but not so much towards their order. I am interested in the moment when that order begins to shift — when an object loses its original function and opens itself to another space of meaning. A punch card was once an instruction: a sequence of signs telling a machine what to do. Today, that same card can become a silent witness to a vanished system, a trace of an action that can no longer be performed.

It is in this transition — between function and memory, between use and meaning, between presence and absence — that my interventions take place. I do not necessarily add something. Sometimes it is a small shift, a mark, an interruption, or an omission. A line that no longer arrives where it was originally meant to. A connection that is broken, or perhaps made visible. By removing or displacing something, what was previously invisible can sometimes become perceptible.

I repair nothing. I do not attempt to restore the past or return an object to its original condition. Rather, my interventions alter the relationship between what was there and what remains. In doing so, an everyday object can detach itself from its original function and become a carrier of other thoughts, memories, and associations.

Connections are central to my work: both visible and invisible. An object may be connected to a person who is no longer present, to an action that no longer exists, to a place, a memory, or a system that is slowly disappearing from our everyday lives. Sometimes it is precisely absence that becomes the connection. What is no longer visible can still remain present as a trace, as memory, or as meaning.

My work therefore begins with the everyday, but does not remain confined to it. By looking again at familiar objects and materials, I try to create a moment of slowing down. An invitation not only to look at what a thing is, but also at what it has experienced, what it carries with it, and which invisible relationships pass through it.

Standing still is not going backwards.
It can also be a way of looking again, of making space for what has not yet been seen, and of making the invisible perceptible through what is already present.

Marinda Vandenheede