As a woman in the art world I aim to surround myself with strong female art workers and I am constantly questioning our capitalist hetero patriarchy. To be part of a women-led collective art endeavor and share a platform with like minded thinkers
and doers is incredibly important to me and to the development of my practice.
My interest in the female and collective body runs like a red thread throughout my work. I have researched ao The Lesbian Continuum, female romantic friendships, the tragic heroine, the deviant witch, lesbian reproduction and a myriad of mothering practices. – In my latest work I take my exploration of self-exposure through confessional autofiction one step further by producing comic diy ‘self portraits’ copying images circulating in popular culture that display an uncomfortable subtext of cultural standards such as success/failure, femininity, desire, etc. In this way I revisit earlier ‘selfie’ work and move it into a more advanced and florid kind of self-portraiture through which I want to explore female and queer sexuality within the
heteropatriarchy. At least I own the rights to myself. To use my own image. By appropriating a.o. the classical reclining nude and contemporary paparazzi photography, or reimagining myself as ‘animal – not human’, I reclaim my body as a
political battleground, questioning our relative freedoms in the age of digital capitalism. We have moved from the physical prison to the digital prison and it directly influences contemporary sexuality. As in the previous (ongoing) series, the ‘unsuccesful’ (because non viral, niche) memes deal with ideas of a wide variety of coupling practices (e.g., dating, marriage, and heartbreak) that secure the intersection of several consequential social hierarchies including gender, class, sexual orientation and institutional power. I hope that my proposal triggers your interest and that we can start discussing in the
near future!
Marijke De Roover
Discover her artwork: https://www.marijkederoover.space/