As a visual artist, Alexandra Engelfriet has worked for more
than twelve years with materials of the earth that can be kneaded: silt,
clay, sand, loam, earth and snow.
The starting point was repeatedly entering into a
process with the material in different environments inside or locations outside.
She worked on the basis of movement and physical contact with the material,
and allowed the work to develop in space.
Outside she worked with the materials that she found there and with the forces
of nature in a particular place.
On the floor of the Waddenzee she created gigantic images of tracks in
the six hours that the tide was out, which were swallowed up again by the sea when
the tide turned. With her body, Alexandra Engelfriet turned the silt into
elongated structures.
The film maker Carrie de Swaan made a film about the working process on the floor
of the Waddenzee. This film will be shown during the exhibition.
Because of the nature of the material and her way of working, the work
was of a temporary nature, but it survives on photographs, slides and film.
Now she is exhibiting her experience with the material in the medium of ceramics.
The work has become permanent as a result of the firing process.
What could be moulded is set in stone, stone in which movement and action
remain visible. Now she uses the walls of pots, which she first turns on a potter's
wheel as the basis for forming clay.
The essence is still movement,
moving material, structures which emerge from the process of kneading and working
the clay. Structures which have the lightness of ripples in the water or the force
of the folded skin of glaciers and lava flows.
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