Artist Statement & Resume | Portfolio

Wendy Nouse is well known for her socially oriented art pieces that are poetic as they are political and almost monumental, born in the Netherlands, Maastricht, 1990.

While studying at the fine arts department of MAFAD, Hogeschool Zuyd in Maastricht, NL, between 2013 and 2017. She moved during her studies to France, Paris in 2016 for the erasmus program at P2F, ENSBA, Paris and immigrated in 2017.

Wendy developed a politicised; and integrated emergent discourse within her art and used it as a context within her work. She began to redefine her ideas about the political and personal discours within her work. Her practice is formed by counter-cultural political context, ruled by mass migration, terrorism, sanitary crisis and climate-control. Subjects that created cultural and political change in not only the European countries.

In her first art pieces she mainly got inspired by auto-etnigraphical research. As she does within the art performances: ‘The forgotten Space [2014] or the Bubble Project [2014]. These work referrers to the modeling industry and the female role wihtin that.

In an installation she made in 2016, she wrote a letter in which she was proposing a social contract [inspired by Jaques Rousseau] referring to the mass migration crises.

In the letter, she proposes to the Syrian people a social contract of collaboration. To share and build on each other’s strengths and qualities. Keeping in mind; that the Netherlands will be flooded due to climate change.

By proposing this solution, with humour, she is creating a discussion, in which we also secure our future and safety. Due to the reality that her country is under the water level and will completely disappear. The letter has been therefore written, in name of the Dutch people, not the government.

For Wendy, the body is not defined merely by the corporeal limits of the individual but is always set within the social space and cultural context that will define it.

Inspired by the French philosopher Foucault she created a panopticon. Which leads to an art performance, that was fully censured on the opening day of the exhibition. Due to an artistic research based on, ‘how to become a terrorist?’ A complex sensible subject that was completed by an essay, ‘When Art becomes political, can it still be art?’

After moving to France, the complications of dealing with the immigration process, made  Wendy  fall back in a phase of darkness. She tranferred this into a series of collages, drawings and photography. The lack of space and mental freedom is visible in her work. ‘Overachieving’ is presenting this aspect the strongest.

Following the end of the first lockdown in 2020. She decided to change her life, mindset, motivations and actions. Which she visualized in the series ‘Je recherche...’ This work shows how we got confronted with the un-satisfaction within daily life during the lockdown. Wendy created a series of works related to; the first and the second lockdown.

Resumed in the collection of a mulitude of works ‘Residues of life’. The first series shows a shattered image of her herself. Within the second one a more venerable and honest collection of her.