Jessica de Boer

Exhibition

Jessica de Boer is an artist and researcher, working along the boundaries between Art and Science. She creates installations from natural processes that find their way autonomously. In her work she shows that matter, or what appears to be non-life, interacts with other substances thereby triggering movement and change and suggesting life. Even when controlling matter, life still emerges. I believe that non-life exists only in our minds, along the boundaries between the concepts we construct. My idea of contemporary animism is that we can employ the scientific rationale to extend our ideas on what life is and become animists again, but now via the route of observation and experimentation rather than intuition, as was previously the case.

She exhibits the installation "Sealed" which shows the autonomous mixing process of a 10 kg crystal of salt within a cubic meter of transparent ice. In the cold room the salt slowly melts the ice from the inside out creating patterns of untraceable detail.

She graduated cum laude from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague at the interfaculty of ArtScience. Her masters in Public Policy and Sustainability at the University of Twente she did before then. In 2008 she initiated the cultural program Zzondag at Villa Ockenburgh in The Hague, a platform for artists, scientist and musicians to present their work and discuss themes beyond the boundaries of their fields, she was co-curator for 3 years. Last year she did research on contemporary animism in Mexico, including field experience with Huichol Indians and two artist residencies which were co-funded by Stroom Den Haag. This resulted in the work "The Life of the Dead Blue Hummingbird" which is exhibited at three locations in Mexico. Recently she started a PhD on the "Resilient Energy Landscape" at the University of Groningen.

www.jessicadeboer.com