Biography
Monique Bastiaans was born in Jemappes, Mons, Belgium, in 1954. Her mother was Belgian and her father Dutch. She spent her childhood in Tilburg and Margraten, the Netherlands.
In 1972 he moved to Utrecht, where he graduated with a degree in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Utrecht, a city where he exhibited for the first time in 1982. In Holland, he held numerous exhibitions, completed several commissions, and was part of contemporary artist collectives such as Atelier Tij and De Blauwe Wissel, which shared buildings to work and organize exhibitions and meetings.
He makes sculptures in bronze and aluminum. Initially, they were human figures that gradually transformed into birds, and, curiously, the last sculptures he made in Holland before emigrating to Spain were birds in flight.
During his last time in Holland, he was bothered by the slow process of bronze casting and began painting so he could work more spontaneously.
In 1988, she moved with her young son to Spain, where they settled in Chiva, Valencia. She continued painting and for a few years portrayed marginalized and archaic figures.
Coinciding with his move to the countryside in 1992, he returned to his sculptural roots, and thanks to his years of painting, his approach to work became more direct. He uses new materials such as wood, rubber, polyester, and found and recycled objects.
In 1994, he created the Red and Blue intervention at the former Cross factories in Valencia as part of a collective exhibition that vindicated industrial memory.
This was the beginning of his numerous installations and interventions in public spaces and nature.
He favors unconventional exhibition spaces, lived-in spaces, where a type of work is installed with morphological characteristics that give the space a more lively and less object-like appearance.
In 1997, she met composer Leopoldo Amigo and a collaboration and friendship began between the two that would generate both Leopoldo Amigo's many musical compositions for Monique Bastiaans' pieces, and conversely, the creation of stage works for her multimedia concerts.
The exhibition space itself is increasingly developing as an object in itself, especially considering that these are works created for that very space. Sculpture, music, and space are irremediably fused.
In 1998, he participated with the work "According to International Rules" in the first edition of Cabanyal Portes Obertes, an artistic intervention project that emerged in response to the threat to the survival of the Cabanyal neighborhood in Valencia caused by urban development plans. His concern for well-being and social justice led him to participate in three more editions.
He always places great importance on the location where he will exhibit, the space or environment that houses his work. He usually works on each project with a specific location in mind and paying attention to its specific characteristics, whether it's an exhibition hall or an open space, whether urban or natural. He seeks to integrate the work into its surroundings and create more than a dialogue, a relationship of self-involvement, almost out of necessity.
Her interventions in nature, despite the fact that the materials used are often synthetic, seem to be part of the nature that surrounds them. Organic forms and synthetic materials exist in symbiosis with the environment in a dialogue of contrasts between materials, not between forms.
“Who am I to torture trees with the intention that the result will be better than it was before?” he asked himself in Ribarroja del Turia while working on the intervention project “Adeu tristesa” (Goodbye sadness), (2000) which transformed a field of orange trees killed by the sadness disease into an orchard of color and hope.
The respect he feels for the environment is also one of the fundamental reasons for the ephemeral nature of most of his work. The interaction between the work and the environment is presented in subtle ways, such as the movement of the breeze and the reflections of the sun on the nylon mesh in “Midday is celebrated inside” (2001).
In his constant dialogue with nature, he also inverts the concept of land art and, from the starting point of the artificial, creates a recreation of nature in its purest state.
A constant factor in his work is the desire to break our routine perspective, confronting us with other concepts of reality. He seeks to appeal to our lost disposition toward visual wonder and to reveal the comforting beauty of the reality that surrounds us.
For logistical reasons, the execution of his large-scale projects in remote locations is more complicated. This led him to develop ideas and a working method that consisted of inflating, stretching, or filling the work at the destination. (Bactracio 1998 Sweden, Mediodia se celebra en el Interior 2001 Gran Canaria, Helphola 2001 Lanzarote, Ombligos Mirandose 2007 Japan).
In 2002, she taught sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Castilla – La Mancha, Cuenca.
Her works are not bound by a strict discipline; in fact, the combination of diverse elements and resources is a recurring theme in her poetry. This is not only due to the combination of disparate materials and techniques, but also due to her tireless exploration of that fertile interface between object and context.
His works are based on the desire to introduce playful elements into everyday landscapes, both rural and urban, simultaneously creating a relationship so intense that it blends them together. He combines strange bodies, creating impossible unions that are successfully resolved before the incredulous gaze of passersby.
Material references are a constant. The use of fabrics, plastics, and silicones keeps him constantly searching for technical, formal, and aesthetic solutions. Around 2006, he began to research and experiment with the creation of his own materials and textures, inventing materials according to his needs, according to what he wants to express in each work. He replaces plant fibers with industrial structures that can sustain the scale of his new configuration. This substitution of resistant elements makes it possible to oversize these ethereal beings without losing the sense of delicacy. Organic forms crafted with elements derived from the industrial revolution, a nature reinvented, synthesized.
He is influenced by Pop Art. His use of techniques such as serialization and repetition, intense color, and the use of everyday elements of contemporary life such as floats, balloons, and balls constantly draw on popular culture. However, it is striking that these commonly used elements acquire a completely different interpretation when used in a different setting and for a different purpose.
In the exhibition "Las Ideales" (2012), the materials used are more environmentally friendly. He rediscovered papier-mâché and paste (typical materials used in the Fallas festival in Valencia). He chose to continue along this path of sustainable materials and began experimenting with ceramics and iron.
Although the materials she uses vary over the years, the themes of her work are consistent. Nature, femininity, fertility, but also society, philosophy, spirituality, and religion are recurring themes that she expresses in her work in a playful yet reflective manner.
While in the exhibition Plaisir de Fleurir (2007) he reflected on the individual spiritual path within a playful sanctuary, the exhibition Als het Ware (2014) questions Absolute Truth and those who defend it. For the sculpture M-Klok (2014) within this exhibition, he once again works with a composer, this time with an old friend from Utrecht, the musician and composer Sander van Herk.
During a residency in the Netherlands in 2015, she created "Digitaalzaad," a participatory work featuring the terracotta handprints of thousands of people. The work was commissioned for the new ARCUS College building in Heerlen.
Monique Bastiaans lives and works in Chiva, Valencia, Spain.