Mai Marie Dijksma
Mai Marie Choon Dijksma graduated from the Arnhem Hogeschool voor de Kunsten with a Bachelor in Fine Art and then completed her education with a Bachelor of Design, TXT (textile) at Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Since 2011 Mai Marie has created visual installations with the notion of ephemerality being the prominent drive in her creation process. Her work has been shown in South Korea, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. Mai Marie also works in parallel as costume designer for dance, theater and opera productions.
Mai Marie’s artistic practice investigates three main ideas; to search for the relationship between the work and the space in which it is made, to investigate how the texture of the work relates to the space and the viewer, and finally to question and redefine the value of the physical labor required to produce the work. For her, the process of creating the installation is of equal importance to the installation itself. Within her work, the temporality of what she creates is more important than its longevity. Even after the installation is presented often the process continues in the form of slowly destroying the structure.
In the Japanese language there is a word for the void between two objects; ‘MA’. The concept of MA is continuously re-defined and not understood as empty or negative space, but instead as a space that contains life. In a global and fast changing world where the development of innovative technology is crucial to economic development, and the same uniform brands and fast consumption plays an immanent role in society, some communities fear that the identity of their own culture is being lost. As our surroundings become more and more homogenous, what does that do to our memories and our perception of space? During the one and a half months I will be spending at STUDIO KURA / ARTS ITOYA, I would like to explore two subjects: the concept of ‘MA’, and the influence it has on the way we perceive and experience our surroundings. Since the fundamental questions that come up in my work align themselves with a non-Western understanding of space, I feel that the process requires a context in which it will naturally develop, in this case- Japan. I strongly feel that STUDIO KURA / ARTS ITOYA would be a very good institution to develop this work.
Mai Marie will be staying here in Studio Kura for 6weeks.