ARTIST STATEMENT
simone engelen [1988] is a visual artist from the netherlands. she studied photography at the royal academy of art, the hague in 2012 and received a master degree in photography from the st. joost academy, breda in 2016.
within her work she experiments with [the lack of] control over body and mind, using a range of techniques, including writing, photography, installation, performance and meditation, to provoke the viewer to question and share the very stories that define us.
after living in japan for awhile she started working on a long-term project called 27 drafts, for which she used a series of letters that she’s been trying to write following a painful incident from the past. in this work, she returns to the remote mountain village, revisits the guilty landscapes, and shapes current reality to look at how elusive the search for closure and meaning can be.
her ongoing experiments on the malleability of life and identity made her so detached from any sense of self, that she decided on a same leave of absence from everything as her father:
a move to bali, where she is currently working on a novel.