About

Artist Statement Roos van Geffen

The body is my material

I work as a visual artist with video, photography, installation and performance. In my practice I explore how experiences, memories and vulnerabilities are stored in the body and set into motion. In my work the body (or parts of it) is the interpreter of abstract ideas and the place where meaning arises. Recurring themes are intergenerational relationships and the longing for connection.
That longing has its origins in my childhood; I grew up in a family full of tension, that slowly and painfully fell apart. Both my parents and my brother and I lived separately, while I longed for closeness, both emotionally and physically.

Artistic Proces

My artistic process is autobiographical: by investigating and translating my own fears, struggles and desires into art, I try to understand and interpret life. In this I am inspired by the phenomenological thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: the body not as instrument, but as the place from which we experience the world. That body, in my work, is not abstract, it is concretely present: a soap hand that slowly dissolves, jaws that grind until they destroy themselves, a mass of bodies moving in circles. The chosen materials and movements carry the emotional logic of the work: dissolving, wearing down, circling, imploding.

I make works that invite embodied mirroring, not a detached gaze, but something that touches you physically. It is a form of reparative or healing looking: a process in which the viewer not only observes, but through the work sets something in motion within themselves.

The personal and the political

I connect intimate experiences to broader social tendencies and to universal, existential questions around care, vulnerability and legacy. That connection is never illustrative. When I shape the body of my mother from polluted PFAS soil from Dordrecht, or when I build a kinetic installation that slowly destroys itself, it is simultaneously about ecological anxiety, about collective overstimulation, about what generations pass on to one another, in the body, through the body.

Working Method

I work slowly and selectively. I cut and concentrate until only the essence remains. My works are carefully constructed, seemingly simple and direct, but emerge from a layered and ongoing research process. That process takes place in my studio, but also in collaborations with scientists, performers and other artists, in conversations with friends and in the everyday life around me.

A Plea

Through my art I invite reflection on the complexity of being human. It is a plea to let deeper feelings flow and to make the ugly, the human, the uncomfortable visible. I resolve nothing, that something is set into motion is enough.

Roos van Geffen (Nijmegen, 1975) is a multimedia artist based in Amsterdam, working with video, photography, installation and performance. She studied scenography at the Academy of Arts in Tilburg and at the Maastricht Institute of Arts.
Her practice is a mix of lens-based media and spatial installation,grounded in embodied and phenomenological artistic research. She investigates how emotions, experiences and memories are stored in the body and set into motion. In her work, the body functions as a carrier of abstract ideas and a site of meaning. Working from autobiographical experiences, fears and desires, she developslong-term research trajectoriesthat connect the personal to broader questions of care, vulnerability, loss and legacy. Intergenerational relationships and the search for connection are recurring themes.

Van Geffen’s work has been presented internationally, with exhibitions at Palazzo Barolo, Turin (IT), Battersea Arts Center, London (UK), The Human Impacts Centre, New York (US), Fotodok, Utrecht (NL), Stedelijk Museum Schiedam (NL), Penningsfoundation, Eindhoven (NL), Gallery Meno Parkas, Kaunas (LT), Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, Gimpo (KR), Buitenplaats Doornburgh, Maarssen (NL) and Museum Jan Cunen in Oss (NL), among others. In 2020, she presented the critically acclaimed retrospectiveEat Love DieatMuseum Tot Zover.
She has received grants fromMondriaan Fonds, Cultuurfondsand Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst. In addition to her artistic practice, Van Geffen teaches at various art academies and supervises emerging artists.

More about my artistic process

A work often begins with the desire to understand an experience won’t let me go: loss, guilt, complex relationships, a longing for forgiveness or closeness. I relive how such an abstract experience is stored in my body and search for a form that can carry that inner charge. I approach my subject from different perspectives: embodied, philosophical, societal, art historical, sometimes in collaboration with scientists or performers. I work towards images that transcend the personal without being directly explained. I choose medium and material carefully, as they are inseparably connected to the content.For example, in Courtesy of The Artist, a performance that emerged from my frustration that the most valuable thing I can create, a child, is not regarded as such within the art context. At the same time, it questions the tension between art, care and economic necessity. My son separates the chaff from the grain, seated on a fragrant mound of wheat sheaves that refers to fertility, new life and growth, but also to the necessity of putting bread on the table.

I approach the making process as a game, with self imposed rules that guide the creative process. Repetition, restriction and ritual constantly return. With my (video) camera, I follow events or choreographed actions. These actions are not performed as representation, but carried out as real, lived movements in time. Through repetition, nuances become palpable and an underlying layer emerges. In the editing process, I focus on rhythm and dramatic structure to reinforce that underlying layer. For example, in the video installation Fuga, a choreography of falling bodies, the performers developed the rules during six weeks of rehearsals: how to fall, look and stand up. Each performer was given an individual falling sequence, filmed on one uninterrupted 16mm film roll. This restriction captured the tension and intensity of the live performance. The work emerged from my desire for surrender and the need to sometimes disappear, physically and mentally.

My work invites an embodied, sensory experience. In the presentation, I investigate how a work physically relates to the viewer. My works are a mix of lens based media and installation, often presented at life size, allowing the viewer to mirror themselves or physically extend into what they see. Sound and scent can be intrinsic elements, always conceived from the content.In the diptych Mother and Child, I wash my hands with a soap cast of my mother’s hand. The work, installed at belly height, allows the hands on film to visually merge with those of the viewer. At the same time, the scent of myrrh from the soap spreads through the space, a warm, enveloping scent historically associated with suffering and love. In this way, the sensory experience resonates with the core of the work: mutual dependency, care and forgiveness.