Nanne van Schie

“We were dancing in the street to claim space for anyone who doesn’t typically get much room. The beings and ideas that exist on fraying edges, ones who put pressure and ones that flicker or wobble. I danced behind one of the trucks in the parade and saw a person lift a mixer board in the air. It looked like the beating heart of the sound system, cables oozing energy outward and inward. They gave it a celebratory kiss. I smiled at the sight, as I recognised that the stage is also for them; the matter that we speak through and that speaks to us.”

Nanne van Schie (She/They, 2000) observes human-material relationships and questions notions of belonging, uselessness and disruptions. They focus on assemblages in which found objects unite with crafted elements. Ceramic, textile, wood, glass, metal and foam meet in a tense balance in which forces stubbornly go in unruly directions.

Nanne is currently working on a series of cosmic twins, materialised in sculpture and text. Cosmic twinship refers to how consciousnesses can be housed in various bodies and have the ability to move between them. It alludes to the experience of recognising a “self” within and without the individual body. Nanne observes this particularly in their art practice; “when I arrive in my studio, I have the feeling of walking into a room where I was already present before entering”. Therefore through this series of works, they give the stage to the cosmic twins around them and emphasize attentiveness and care towards the material kin with whom we co-habitate so intimately.