In my practice, I explore the vulnerability of the personal document. I collect old photographs that have become disconnected from their original owners and meanings. By bringing these found memories together with my own photography, history, and interpretation, I sing the photographs free from a clear, objective truth. The relationship between figures, objects, and space fascinates me. In my work, space is a living medium, saturated with time. Themes such as closeness, community with the more-than-human, nostalgia, and homecoming recur frequently, as does the Doppelgänger. In my work, I explore the tension between discipline and letting go. In doing so, I leave room for the imperfect, the unfinished.

Studio Merel Hak

As a visual artist, I combine a practice in photography and painting. Drawing on my background in Cultural Analysis, Film Studies, and Depth Psychology, I explore the layered nature of time, the unconscious, and the conceptual relationships between people, objects, and space. Fascinated by the intersection of Degrowth, Critical Animal Studies, and ecofeminism, I explore how patriarchal power structures and traditional hierarchies shape an extractivist logic that exploits both marginalized human lives and the more-than-human network of existence.