Anna de Vriend - (she/her)
www.annadevriend.com
Anna de Vriend (1996, the Hague) graduated from BEAR ArtEZ in 2020 with an honours
certificate. Her artistic practice is built upon research about the extensive livestock farming
in the Netherlands and the absurdity of feigning control and practical rationality in an
industry fueled by blood and dissociation. Her conceptual persona ‘The Crazy Sheep Lady’
uses this research as material in performances and installations.
At the moment, Anna is researching the tactics used to demonize close bonds between
non-human animals and women during the witch burnings in Europe and the lasting
effects of this. Her methodology involves fieldwork, performance, collecting materials,
reading and examining her own relationship with the non-human animals in her life.
Her practice is based around an ongoing research on the hierarchy between human
animals and non-human animals. With the help of her conceptual persona – The Sheep
Lady – she does fieldwork in spaces where this hierarchy becomes tangible,
like slaughterhouses and zoos. The material she collects ends up in various artworks ranging
from performative installations to sculpture to photography. Where she combines a
theatrical and absurd approach with cold-hard reality to draw the viewer into her world of
questioning this hierarchy and taking responsibility for embodying a power position over
non-human animals.
∞Ö∞
Kai -(they/them/she/her)
www.kai.fail
Kai (1995, Ghent) graduated from BEAR ArtEZ in 2020. They are non-binary and queer
which influences their work as an artist. Visibility, the body and non-conformity are main
themes in Kai’s projects. Through delicate handwork, writing, painting, drawing and mixed
pressing techniques they create booklets, performances, costumes and letters that
confront the onlooker with the reality of not being able and not wanting to fit in an
existing framework.
∞Ö∞
Anne Schoemaker - (she/her)
www.anneschoemaker.nl
Anne Schoemaker (1997, Deventer) graduated BEAR ArtEZ in 2020.
She operates from the conviction that artistic processes can establish
a deep and meaningful connection between people, material, time and spaces.
Non-human objects and places have their own narratives and autonomy that both influence
and get influenced. These connections form the base for films, objects and photographs
that carry the viewer into a dreamy state.
Through her embodied experience, Anne currently is exploring the
relation between concepts such as silence, muteness, and the architecture/objects
we are surrounded by. As a person with a neuro-atypical brain, she experiences a whole other
universe that is concealed by the normative verbal environment; a concealment
that makes the violence and aggression towards minority groups hard to grasp.