18 maart tot 22 april

After her elaborate travels through Israel, Iceland and Bolivia, Scarlett Hooft Graafland (NL, 1973) is now showing the results of her working period in China. In one of the larger ports of China, Xiamen, she was inspired by the typical architecture, the mountain landscapes, the local population. Being led by an almost antropological curiosity and her well developed artistic sensitivity, she decisively positions people or props in the landscape or city surroundings. Her impressions take shape in this magical series of powerful images.

Because of the prominent role of the human figure in her compositions, Hooft Graafland finds her work to be more like sculpture than photography. Also, the process of staging the setting becomes part of the concept, since this site specific work needs the necessary preparation. The careful choreography of the human figure in its surroundings also renders the work a performance-like quality.

Even more sculptural is the project Scarlett undertook in close collaboration with a traditional porcelain factory. By combining porcelain and firework, two typical Chinese inventions, she had unbaked vases blown up. After its baking- and glazing process the force of explosion is materialized in the snow white, vulnarable porcelain.

2006