2025
Temper Tantrum Bonehouse (Chilling Incisions calling things that have no name)
at W139 Amsterdam
semi-solo featuring artists Lolly Adams, Ozgur Atlagan, Monster Chetwynd, Diane Mahin, BJ Nilsen (sound design), Aimee Philips & Nina Lauger
text by i.c.w. Levi van Gelder
2025
W139 opens its mouth and swallows you whole in Temper Tantrum Bonehouse, an exhibition initiated by Mette Sterre. Featuring works by Lolly Adams, ÖzgürAtlagan, Monster Chetwynd, Diane Mahín, Aimée Philips & Nina Läuger, and Mette Sterre, this immersive group show explores the limitless potential of the body—turning W139 into a possessed, grotesque, more-than- human organism.
Temper Tantrum Bonehouse is a place where ghosts linger and monsters thrive. The exhibition features new and existing works by artists that similarly distort the body beyond limitations and familiarity—creating chimeric apparitions that defy categorization and offer counter-narratives against oppressive systems that have long legitimised specific forms of knowledge and delegitimised others.
As you step into the exhibition, daylight disappears and you move through derelict cabins, eerie basements, glitching mirrors, and distorted mise-en-scènes. Hair clings to walls, limbs emerge from shadows, and answering machines stammer forgotten messages—like trapped moments in time oozing through past, present, and future. Nearby, Dam Square carries the spectre of witch hunts from the 16th and 17th centuries, marking a moment in which the insubordinate, feminine body in particular was targeted for its threat to the emerging capitalist division of labour. The building itself, trembling with the memories of freakshows and anatomical theatres, is now infected by the artifice of the entertainment-tourism industry of the historic city centre.
W139 becomes an unpredictable ecosystem of spectacle and rebellious decay, haunted by the histories of empire, science, and subjugation that have stripped the body of mystery and reduced it to a container for labour-power. What unfolds in the exhibition is not a descent into horror, but a reckoning with the politics of fear—woven through the systems that marked specific bodies as monstrous.
Temper Tantrum Bonehouse responds to a moment in which fear continues to dominate collective life: fear of the other, of change, of the future. This culture of fear is fueled by the steady increase in ultra-conservative governments around the world, legislating violently against trans, queer, female, and racialised bodies—bodies that remain sites of extraction and discipline. But within these ruins, resistance lurks. The pathologized abject body—excessive, leaky, unruly—confronts us with both horror and possibility, and becomes an armour. As Julia Kristeva writes in Powers of Horror, the abject is the ‘in-between, the ambiguous, the composite’, it is that which threatens identity, system, and order. Temper Tantrum Bonehouse proposes the abject body as a site of agency and imagination. Fear is not avoided, but disassembled, recoded, reimagined— jammed into new categories.
The exhibition pulses and panics, dares and disorients, asking us to renegotiate our relationships to power,to the system, and to our own corporeality. We draw back upon these unruly beings—resistant, uncontainable, refusing to be sanitised by myths of progress and normalcy. We collectively become somethingelse. Cyborgs. Chimeras. Monsters. The monstrous is not deviation—but prophecy.
Sympoietic Shapes - Loods 6 Amsterdam
duo-exhibition with Marlot Meyer
Sympoietic Shapes – A two-person exhibition by Marlot Meyer and Mette Sterre
curated by Virág Szentkirályi
2025
To make-with is to create in relation. Sympoiesis – a term that has gained resonance in recent ecological and feminist thought – describes forms of creation that are collaborative, entangled, and interdependent. It resists the idea of closed, self- sufficient systems and instead invites us to see life as something that unfolds through
response, co-creation, and shared transformation.
In Sympoietic Shapes, Marlot Meyer and Mette Sterre each shape living, breathing environments that respond to forces beyond themselves. Their works, while materially distinct, converge in a shared understanding of the body – human and more-than-human – not as closed or bounded, but as open, porous, and always becoming in relation to the world around it.
Meyer’s Pneuma follows the breath of the Waddenzee and the quiet rhythms of human physiology. Her inflatable sculptures expand and contract with tidal data and human breath. Her work makes visible the continuous exchange between inner states and environmental forces, where breath becomes a medium of connection.
Sterre’s How to Catch an Octopus in a Broken Heart conjures a fleshy, mutable space – a soft architecture where grief, memory, and biology merge. Drawing on the language of deep-sea creatures and dreamlike anatomies, the installation pulses with life that is both familiar and other.
Together, these installations form a kind of shared breathing system – sculptural ecosystems in which form is not fixed, but emergent. Sympoietic Shapes remind us that nothing is made alone. We are always becoming-with: with others, with our environments, with grief, data, water, and air.
To make-with is to create in relation. This exhibition embraces the concept of sympoiesis–drawn from ecological and feminist thought–by exploring creation as collaborative, entangled, and interdependent. It invites us to see life as something unfolding through shared transformation.
Marlot Meyer and Mette Sterre each shape living, responsive environments attuned to forces beyond the self. Meyer’s inflatable sculptures breathe with tidal data and human respiration, revealing the porous exchange between body and environment.
Sterre’s installation conjures a dreamlike architecture where grief, memory, and
biology merge in shifting forms. Echoing the morphologies of deep-sea life, it evokes
a world both intimate and estranged, fluid and in flux. Materially distinct yet conceptually aligned, their works share an understanding of the body–human and more-than-human–as open and always becoming in relation.
Sympoietic Shapes reminds us: nothing is made alone. We are always becoming-
with– others, environments, data, memory, breath.
IK BEN GEWOON HIER - Centraal Museum Utrecht, de Verdieping
curated by Kreukel Collectief, Eva Burgering and Bart Rutten
2025
Disability is not far away. It's ordinary and special at the same time. In Ik ben gewoon hier, you look at makers, people and society from a disability - in everyday experiences and imaginative art. In this exhibition, Het Kreukel Collective — a group of disabled artists, activists and researchers — turns the idea of a makeable life upside down.
THE NORM
When do your body and mind meet 'the' standard? Who actually decides it? In five spaces, you'll explore the boundaries between normal and non-normal. Be aware of your (preliminary) judgment and the way you see things in the Staarkamer. Feel excluded or, on the contrary, locked up with The Institute. Go wild in the Warrior Room. Let yourself be seduced by the Lusthof. And finally, meet yourself in the Hall of Mirrors.
“Have you ever met a normal person? So, did you like it? ' - Simon Carmiggelt, 1964
WITH WORK BY Karin Arink, Sue Austin, Dan Blokker, Boaz Blume, Margaretha Cornelia Boellaard, Gon Buurman, Claire Cunningham, Amie Dicke, Menko Dijksterhuis, Simone Donkersloot, Marlene Dumas, Feminists Against Ableism, Karel Gomes, Jan van Herwijnen, Anja Hiddinga & Leendert Pot, Raimund Hoghe, Noli Kat, Kitchen's Light, Bart van der Leck, Couzijn van Leeuwen, Emiel van Moerkerken, J.H. Moesman, Erwin Olaf, Izzy Wu Ramos, Richard Sandell, Mari Sanders, Viviane Sassen, Finnegan Shannon, Mette Sterre, Maerten Stoop, Mira Thompson, Magnus Wallin, Derk Wessels and Willem Wilms. Ik ben gewoon hier is an exhibition in collaboration with The Kreukel Collective.
2024
« Mette Sterre: Estafette Cabarette - Invasion and multiplication in the reaction of the host issues »
ISO Amsterdam
Live Art Series curated by Florence Parot
2024
For 2024’s final iteration of The Live Art Series, ISO is excited to invite Mette Sterre to host a transformative evening operating from an intersectional queer feminist perspective. Mette Sterre is a Dutch artist creating performance, sculpture, installation and video in an effort to investigate notions of materiality, perception and intuition at the edges of the (non)human body. Her performances and sculptures feature hand-made, labor-intensive “body-masks” and props that utilize elements of folkloric and carnivalesque traditions of temporary autonomous spaces, myths, and legends in a playful way.
‘Mette Sterre Estafette Cabarette – invasion and multiplication in the reaction of the host issues’ is a performance situated in the dimension of embodied dissonance, that brings together the deconstruction of human certainties philosophically – and doing so in a disorientating and colorful way. The evening promises a playful visual and sonic escape from fixed definitions, a meeting point of machines and monsters, hybrids and cyborgs, the organic and the inorganic… and always pertaining to the artist’s motto: “improve, improvise”. For The Live Art Series, Sterre takes us on a journey towards intimacy with new assemblages, a tentacular entity interrogating binarisms, and altogether transpiring as an amalgamation of ecstasy, beauty, fear and abjection. The show is performed together with Peter Cripps Clarks and Artemise Ploegaerts.
Photos by Studio Fabian Landewee
‘Mette Sterre Estafette Cabarette – invasion and multiplication in the reaction of the host issues’ is a performance situated in the dimension of embodied dissonance, that brings together the deconstruction of human certainties philosophically – and doing so in a disorientating and colorful way. The evening promises a playful visual and sonic escape from fixed definitions, a meeting point of machines and monsters, hybrids and cyborgs, the organic and the inorganic… and always pertaining to the artist’s motto: “improve, improvise”. For The Live Art Series, Sterre takes us on a journey towards intimacy with new assemblages, a tentacular entity interrogating binarisms, and altogether transpiring as an amalgamation of ecstasy, beauty, fear and abjection. The show is performed together with Peter Cripps Clarks and Artemise Ploegaerts.
Photos by Studio Fabian Landewee
Absurd Visions
Bow Arts Shaftesbury Avenue Takeover
Frieze Week
Curated by Rosie Gibbens
exhibiting artists: Rosie Gibbens, Hongxi Li, Tim Spooner, Mette Sterre.
2024
Absurd Visions features work from Gibbens’ Parabiosis series and Spooner’s A New Kind of Animal which will weave themselves into the office detritus left behind in the Shaftesbury building. Parabiosis unpacks the pregnant body with sculptures that combine ‘puppets’ and machinery. The title refers to the surgical technique of joining two living organisms together to share a physiological system. Inspired by this process and theories about artificial robotic wombs, Gibbens creates various ‘birthing’ contraptions. Made during the third trimester of her pregnancy, these works also document a time of mixed emotions and extreme body changes.
Spooner’s animal forms will be tangled and tethered by electrical cables, trapped under bits of remaining furniture, vibrating on empty lockers, and showing off in conference rooms. Originally made for Southwark Park and Bluecoat’s gallery spaces, this new iteration of A New Kind of Animal will be reborn to relate and inhabit the office spaces at Shaftesbury, alongside Gibbens’ ‘birthing’ contraptions which can become activated in performance.
Mette Sterre exhibits several artworks from across her portfolio that speak to the absurd themes and abandoned office environment, including film, sculpture and the creation of new “office workers”. Included is her costume from the performance G-string Theory – Attempting to Rise, which Sterre will be performing during the exhibition.
Also following her performance, Hongxi Li exhibits the film version and desk prop from YES YES YES: an L shaped desk with a dramatic crack and emergency button, hinting at the turmoil and violence to come. Featuring Jolene, a fictional character embodying an Asian female persona who Li often uses in her work, the work exudes palpable frustration and helplessness.
photos by Alessandro Mariscalco and Jon Baker
review Berlin Art Link
review fad magazine
Spooner’s animal forms will be tangled and tethered by electrical cables, trapped under bits of remaining furniture, vibrating on empty lockers, and showing off in conference rooms. Originally made for Southwark Park and Bluecoat’s gallery spaces, this new iteration of A New Kind of Animal will be reborn to relate and inhabit the office spaces at Shaftesbury, alongside Gibbens’ ‘birthing’ contraptions which can become activated in performance.
Mette Sterre exhibits several artworks from across her portfolio that speak to the absurd themes and abandoned office environment, including film, sculpture and the creation of new “office workers”. Included is her costume from the performance G-string Theory – Attempting to Rise, which Sterre will be performing during the exhibition.
Also following her performance, Hongxi Li exhibits the film version and desk prop from YES YES YES: an L shaped desk with a dramatic crack and emergency button, hinting at the turmoil and violence to come. Featuring Jolene, a fictional character embodying an Asian female persona who Li often uses in her work, the work exudes palpable frustration and helplessness.
photos by Alessandro Mariscalco and Jon Baker
review Berlin Art Link
review fad magazine
- Any Item Detestable to Any Reasonable Sensitivities
MMCA Changdong
Solo show
August 2024
A new performance developed by combining physical and digital technologies creating a performative installation with simple kinetic structures, monstreous manipulation and add-ons, sounds and drawings to create a new contemporary myth of hearing voices in the fan, being chased by Jackie Derrida and wondering what will happen with our bodies in the future when the desire to improve might be a sulfur prophecy. Use the force but don't force yourself.
Collaboration with Sungeun Euhn.
Collaboration with Sungeun Euhn.
Where Gestures Sing
at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Changdong Seoul Korea
curated by Heejung Park
made possible by Mondriaan Fund
May 2024
MMCA Residency Changdong, will hold the exhibition Where gestures sing from May 24th (Fri) to June 2nd (Sun) 2024. This exhibition features seven artists from five countries, including three domestic artists (teams), Unmake Lab, Leeje, and Jung Choulgue, as well as five international artists—Mette Sterre (Netherlands), Kim Kilde (Denmark), Sebastian Moldovan (Romania), and Rosario Aninat (Chile). Where gestures sing delves into the interactions between human and non-human, subject and object, and materials within the uncertain world accelerating towards digital transformation. It observes signs of ambivalence that seem incompatible, such as past and future, as well as abstraction and representation, while highlighting their relationships and cyclical nature. Artists will present fifteen works including site-specific installations, performances, and hand-sewn drawings, suggesting the dismantling of human/language-centric narratives beyond the boundaries of space and time, and focusing more on primal gestures.
2023
Vicious Circle Disco
solo exhibtion
CODA Museum Apeldoorn
curated by Rianne Groen
2023
Mette Sterre creates a surrealistic roller disco in CODA. A swirling place full of danger, with its ups and downs, the merging of people, speed, and music; a world where nothing seems stable and everything is spinning. The title of the exhibition not only refers to this infinite spinning of the world, but also to the malignant undercurrent in a crumbling world.
Sterre is interested in ancient and contemporary myths and sagas and how they live on in people and their stories. The roller disco Multidance in the Matenhal in Apeldoorn is an example. Here many people from Apeldoorn had parties in the 1980s and 1990s. Another point of reference for the exhibition is Xanadu, a cult film in which a poor artist is kissed by a muse who inspires him to open a roller skate disco. Over the centuries muses are often depicted in art as women who merely serve as instruments for men. From a feminist and queer perspective Mette Sterre gives her own interpretation of what a muse could be today.
Another important element in Mette Sterre’s work are the sculptural open wounds that refer to the wounds and scars that roller skating can cause. A wound has many other meanings for Sterre. It serves as a protective layer, as a ‘document’ of stories, but a wound is also a portal to another world. This in-between space is an intriguing place for Sterre.
Named in the top 5 Summer Exhibitons at the Financial Times by Jeroen Bos
"In Museum CODA, in Apeldoorn, artist Mette Sterre has created a surreal roller disco. It's a disturbing trip down memory lane, with references to the film classics Home Alone and Xanadu. The disturbing aspect lies in the theatrical, grotesque monsters that populate the disco. They are humorous yet slightly unsettling. For this reason, Sterre's fantasy world is a delightful place to let yourself be carried away to. — Jeroen Bos"
Sterre is interested in ancient and contemporary myths and sagas and how they live on in people and their stories. The roller disco Multidance in the Matenhal in Apeldoorn is an example. Here many people from Apeldoorn had parties in the 1980s and 1990s. Another point of reference for the exhibition is Xanadu, a cult film in which a poor artist is kissed by a muse who inspires him to open a roller skate disco. Over the centuries muses are often depicted in art as women who merely serve as instruments for men. From a feminist and queer perspective Mette Sterre gives her own interpretation of what a muse could be today.
Another important element in Mette Sterre’s work are the sculptural open wounds that refer to the wounds and scars that roller skating can cause. A wound has many other meanings for Sterre. It serves as a protective layer, as a ‘document’ of stories, but a wound is also a portal to another world. This in-between space is an intriguing place for Sterre.
Named in the top 5 Summer Exhibitons at the Financial Times by Jeroen Bos
"In Museum CODA, in Apeldoorn, artist Mette Sterre has created a surreal roller disco. It's a disturbing trip down memory lane, with references to the film classics Home Alone and Xanadu. The disturbing aspect lies in the theatrical, grotesque monsters that populate the disco. They are humorous yet slightly unsettling. For this reason, Sterre's fantasy world is a delightful place to let yourself be carried away to. — Jeroen Bos"
An Octopus Named If
38CC Delft
curated by Jip Hinten
Mette Sterre, Monira Al Qadiri, Sarah Browne, Paulo Arraiano en Lee Wen
2023
A lot of scientific research has been donn into octopusses. Together with students from the TU Delft of the Advanced Protyping at the TU Delft I asked; how can we explore the world like an octopus? Together we developed a new bodymask researching the qualities of the skin of an octopus. This work and the research in combination with previous developed work formed the basis for the exhibition "An Octopus Named if". My work then was contextualised with the work of other artists Monira Al Qadiri, Sarah Browne, Paulo Arraiano and Lee Wen, where octopusses play an important role, concepts such as Metamorfose, camouflage and embodiment are connecting elements.
An Octopus Named If was a collaboration between 38cc and the Crossing Parralles and TU Delft, that connects scientists and artists to collaborate on innovative projects. This is connecting to the curatorial focus of 38CC and the philosophy of the "museum van alsof", where 38cc the role of fiction, science and and sociertye researches.
This project has been kindly supported by PauwHof Fonds
photos by Roosje Verschoor
An Octopus Named If was a collaboration between 38cc and the Crossing Parralles and TU Delft, that connects scientists and artists to collaborate on innovative projects. This is connecting to the curatorial focus of 38CC and the philosophy of the "museum van alsof", where 38cc the role of fiction, science and and sociertye researches.
This project has been kindly supported by PauwHof Fonds
photos by Roosje Verschoor
There's No Flesh
at Galerie im Tracklhaus
Summeracademy Salzburg
curated by Sophie Goltz and Maximilian Lehner
2023
Bodies liquefy when their appearance combines with new technologies contrary to cultural notions. Mette Sterre's (b. 1983, Delft/Netherlands) work constantly reappropriates and appreciates bodies in techno-social contexts. Drawing on ideas of post/transhumanism, queer/feminism and science fiction, the artist approaches bodies more than as just a substantial mass (flesh). Voluminous body suits, 3D-printed figures and the fusion of different materials such as plastic and oil together with the human body show a world where bodies resemble their surroundings and thus point to a future beyond anthropocentrism.
Photos by Rudolf Strobl
Photos by Rudolf Strobl
Miraculous Beings
Kunsthal de Kade, Amersfoort
curated by Judith van Meeuwen and Laura Stolwerk
2023
For centuries, man has been interested in the extraordinary animals that roam the earth. To mark the 75th anniversary of DierenPark Amersfoort, Kunsthal KAdE will presented the exhibition "Miraculous Beings" from June 3 to September 3 2023.
'A living plastic Christmas tree, an AI dragonfly: 'Miraculous Beings' at Kunsthal KAdE shows poignantly how people regard other animals.' ●●●● (NRC)
Zoos, cabinets of curiosities and dioramas
Dioramas: Daniel Dmyszewicz, Jacco Olivier and Mette Sterre
Around the 16th and 17th centuries, animals were actually brought to Europe from other continents. In menageries, princes and wealthy individuals kept exotic species of animals in the gardens of their palaces. Some artists there were given the opportunity to draw from observation. At the end of the 18th century, scientific research on animals revived and the first public zoos emerged in Europe. These zoos, like the menageries, cabinets of curiosities and royal collections, were the result of European man's desire for expansion. The "foreign" came closer and closer. And with it the curiosity for the unknown, the wondrous and the need to know and own animals. In natural history museums, dioramas attempt to show the animal in its own biotope. I was commisioned to create new work for this exhibition, and always wanted to create a diorama. For the exhibition i created a work with animatronics, bodymasks, animations, a gigantic collage backdrop of 4 x 8 meters and paper.
The titel of the work is "The Yestradamus Enigma Complex (Simulating Stimuleer Reactor Fusion Cooking When All becomes (F)one),". In the 17th century, philosopher Descartes compared animal behavior to that of machines. Much like machines, animals were considered a collection of mechanical parts, thus deemed incapable of thought, fundamentally differentiating them from humans. As a consequence of the industrial revolution, the role of animals in our daily lives diminished, solidifying the concept of animals as soulless beings in the 19th century. Simultaneously, technology began to play an increasingly significant role in our lives.Artist Mette Sterre crafted a diorama portraying a futuristic landscape wherein the planet has become uninhabitable for humans, yet providing space for the development of alternative forms of life. Humanity no longer takes center stage but has transformed into a hybrid entity, embodying characteristics of humans, animals, plants, and machines.
Participating artists Kunsthal KAdE
Greta Alfaro (ES) | Annabelle Binnerts (NL) | Mircea Cantor (RO) | Daniel Dmyszewicz (NL) | Sofia Crespo (IT/AR) | Paul van der Eerden (NL) | Philip Emde (DE) | Jordan Herregraven (NL/US) | Tuomas A. Laitinen (FI) | Romy Muijrers (NL) | Katja Novitskova (EE) | Jacco Olivier (NL) | Amalia Pica (AR) | Mette Sterre (NL) | Philip Ullman (SE) | Anne de Vries (NL)
Participating artists Dierenpark Amersfoort
Gijs Assmann (NL) | Tom Claassen (NL) | Sander van Noort (NL) | Sharon Van Overmeiren (BE) | Pip Passchier (NL) | Henk Visch (NL) | Müge Yilmaz (TR)
Photos by Mette Sterre, Peter Cox en Mike Bink
'A living plastic Christmas tree, an AI dragonfly: 'Miraculous Beings' at Kunsthal KAdE shows poignantly how people regard other animals.' ●●●● (NRC)
Zoos, cabinets of curiosities and dioramas
Dioramas: Daniel Dmyszewicz, Jacco Olivier and Mette Sterre
Around the 16th and 17th centuries, animals were actually brought to Europe from other continents. In menageries, princes and wealthy individuals kept exotic species of animals in the gardens of their palaces. Some artists there were given the opportunity to draw from observation. At the end of the 18th century, scientific research on animals revived and the first public zoos emerged in Europe. These zoos, like the menageries, cabinets of curiosities and royal collections, were the result of European man's desire for expansion. The "foreign" came closer and closer. And with it the curiosity for the unknown, the wondrous and the need to know and own animals. In natural history museums, dioramas attempt to show the animal in its own biotope. I was commisioned to create new work for this exhibition, and always wanted to create a diorama. For the exhibition i created a work with animatronics, bodymasks, animations, a gigantic collage backdrop of 4 x 8 meters and paper.
The titel of the work is "The Yestradamus Enigma Complex (Simulating Stimuleer Reactor Fusion Cooking When All becomes (F)one),". In the 17th century, philosopher Descartes compared animal behavior to that of machines. Much like machines, animals were considered a collection of mechanical parts, thus deemed incapable of thought, fundamentally differentiating them from humans. As a consequence of the industrial revolution, the role of animals in our daily lives diminished, solidifying the concept of animals as soulless beings in the 19th century. Simultaneously, technology began to play an increasingly significant role in our lives.Artist Mette Sterre crafted a diorama portraying a futuristic landscape wherein the planet has become uninhabitable for humans, yet providing space for the development of alternative forms of life. Humanity no longer takes center stage but has transformed into a hybrid entity, embodying characteristics of humans, animals, plants, and machines.
Participating artists Kunsthal KAdE
Greta Alfaro (ES) | Annabelle Binnerts (NL) | Mircea Cantor (RO) | Daniel Dmyszewicz (NL) | Sofia Crespo (IT/AR) | Paul van der Eerden (NL) | Philip Emde (DE) | Jordan Herregraven (NL/US) | Tuomas A. Laitinen (FI) | Romy Muijrers (NL) | Katja Novitskova (EE) | Jacco Olivier (NL) | Amalia Pica (AR) | Mette Sterre (NL) | Philip Ullman (SE) | Anne de Vries (NL)
Participating artists Dierenpark Amersfoort
Gijs Assmann (NL) | Tom Claassen (NL) | Sander van Noort (NL) | Sharon Van Overmeiren (BE) | Pip Passchier (NL) | Henk Visch (NL) | Müge Yilmaz (TR)
Photos by Mette Sterre, Peter Cox en Mike Bink
2022
eBIG DADA
Arti et Amicitae Amsterdam
curated by Arjen Lancel en Kim Nathalia
participating artist AKMAR, Anouk Kruithof, Mette Sterre, Splitter Splatter, Jeroen van Loon, Anton Shebetko, Valentina Gal, Casper de Jong, Saemundur Thor Helgason, Bram Ellens, Leon de Bruijne, Maaike Fransen.
2022
As we merge with advanced technologies, the question of what it means to be human becomes more relevant than ever. Is there a limit to being human? And what defines us as human beings? Is it our reasoning, our idea of freedom, the awareness of our mortality, or the fact that we are storytellers? Big DaDa responds to current events, where digital culture and autonomous imagination merge into a new movement of large-scale control and spontaneous chaos. It revolves around the power of both data and DaDa, the defense weapon. Both connect humanity as a malleable, powerful god and as an irrational child longing for spontaneity and believing in an ideal world.
The newly commissioned work "Phantasmaphobia"used surveillance camera systems, projectors, simple kinetic elemenrs such as discobal motors, fans and inflatables. Using the incoming data captured by the surveillance cameras were projected on animated reflected surfaces, resembling with neurons being fired by the brain, creating differents synapses. To me this was a way to draw a parralel with feeding and distributing our data to become parts of algorythmns as something beautiful as well as uncanny, creating undecipherable ghosts in machines, or hives minds. The titel phantasmaphobia, meaning the fear of ghosts, is anecditilly refrencing the old film technique of pepper ghosts (and the notion of phantasmagoria used by Baudelaire) questions the traces we leave behind online that can possibly haunts us and all that we consume through the data harvest, potentionally inducing anxieties.
Kindly supported by Mondriaan Fonds
photographs by Maarten Nauw
The newly commissioned work "Phantasmaphobia"used surveillance camera systems, projectors, simple kinetic elemenrs such as discobal motors, fans and inflatables. Using the incoming data captured by the surveillance cameras were projected on animated reflected surfaces, resembling with neurons being fired by the brain, creating differents synapses. To me this was a way to draw a parralel with feeding and distributing our data to become parts of algorythmns as something beautiful as well as uncanny, creating undecipherable ghosts in machines, or hives minds. The titel phantasmaphobia, meaning the fear of ghosts, is anecditilly refrencing the old film technique of pepper ghosts (and the notion of phantasmagoria used by Baudelaire) questions the traces we leave behind online that can possibly haunts us and all that we consume through the data harvest, potentionally inducing anxieties.
Kindly supported by Mondriaan Fonds
photographs by Maarten Nauw
MANIFESTA 14 " it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise”
curated by Catherine Nichols
Grand Hotel, Prishtina, Kosovo
2022
Mette Sterre’s speculative fabulations invariably begin with the body masks she sculpts. Only when these grotesque, unruly creations become a second skin to their wearers do the artist’s personae fully come into being; only then do their stories spill forth.
Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession (If you don’t know, you don’t grow) plunges both the performer and the viewer into a gurgling underwater world that breathes and writhes, ebbs and flows. The central figure in Sterre’s seascape invokes a mermaid.
Since ancient times, such human-animal hybrids have featured in the myths of many cultures. For all their erotic power, they are typically cast as flawed and disabled, as misfits unable to survive on land, and yet never entirely at home in the water either.Sterre counters this narrative by hooking her water woman up with an air supply, such that she might indeed feel at home under the sea. Mermaid meets cyborg – and then?
text by Catherine Nichols
photos by Adthe Mulha for Manifesta 14
press
Berlin Art LInk
" Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession (If you don’t know, you don’t grow)’ (2021) by Dutch artist Mette Sterre, located on the top floor of the Grand Hotel, does something similar. Glossy green globs cover the walls and drip from the ceiling of what might have possibly been the hotel’s penthouse suite. A short curatorial text plastered on the side mentions mermaids, myths, and machines, but these themes play second fiddle to the first impression made by the work. It presents the Grand Hotel as a living, breathing, but sick and suffering entity.
Placed in this unusual location, many artworks, especially those by foreign artists, acquire meanings that their creators may not have originally intended. Would Sterre or Selma Selman, whose short film ‘Mercedes Matrix’ (2019) shows her family smashing a Mercedes Benz, a well-known symbol of luxury in the Balkans, object to these interpretations? Probably not. After all, Manifesta founder Hedwig Fijen has talked at length about the idea of “co-creation”: co-creation between artists and visitors, internationals and locals, and between Manifesta and the city of Prishtina."
Vogue Poland
"The representation of international artists also contributed to the unsettling, somewhat apocalyptic mood of the city. This was the case with the transhumanist sculptures 'Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession' by Dutch artist Mette Sterre, drawing attention to the body and undergoing hybrid transformations."
Stirworld
Prishtina insight
Blokmagazine
New York Times
Hyperallergic
El Pais
Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession (If you don’t know, you don’t grow) plunges both the performer and the viewer into a gurgling underwater world that breathes and writhes, ebbs and flows. The central figure in Sterre’s seascape invokes a mermaid.
Since ancient times, such human-animal hybrids have featured in the myths of many cultures. For all their erotic power, they are typically cast as flawed and disabled, as misfits unable to survive on land, and yet never entirely at home in the water either.Sterre counters this narrative by hooking her water woman up with an air supply, such that she might indeed feel at home under the sea. Mermaid meets cyborg – and then?
text by Catherine Nichols
photos by Adthe Mulha for Manifesta 14
press
Berlin Art LInk
" Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession (If you don’t know, you don’t grow)’ (2021) by Dutch artist Mette Sterre, located on the top floor of the Grand Hotel, does something similar. Glossy green globs cover the walls and drip from the ceiling of what might have possibly been the hotel’s penthouse suite. A short curatorial text plastered on the side mentions mermaids, myths, and machines, but these themes play second fiddle to the first impression made by the work. It presents the Grand Hotel as a living, breathing, but sick and suffering entity.
Placed in this unusual location, many artworks, especially those by foreign artists, acquire meanings that their creators may not have originally intended. Would Sterre or Selma Selman, whose short film ‘Mercedes Matrix’ (2019) shows her family smashing a Mercedes Benz, a well-known symbol of luxury in the Balkans, object to these interpretations? Probably not. After all, Manifesta founder Hedwig Fijen has talked at length about the idea of “co-creation”: co-creation between artists and visitors, internationals and locals, and between Manifesta and the city of Prishtina."
Vogue Poland
"The representation of international artists also contributed to the unsettling, somewhat apocalyptic mood of the city. This was the case with the transhumanist sculptures 'Seapussy Power Galore – Abcession' by Dutch artist Mette Sterre, drawing attention to the body and undergoing hybrid transformations."
Stirworld
Prishtina insight
Blokmagazine
New York Times
Hyperallergic
El Pais
Theta Dream (in the end we are all a bunch of moving fluff)
duo-exhbition with Lotte Wierenga
Kers Gallery Amsterdam
2022
Streaming in from all sides light penetrates the surface of my skin and warms my blood. A chameleon composite, my form changes based on what I take in. I am both perception and the perceived, knower and known, the ‘solutionʼ of opposites dissolved. I am body, vessel, being— with brain waves. Or so it could be...Brain waves have been measurable since the 1930s. Oscillating at Hertz (Hz) ranging from 4-30 they are both the stuff of science fiction and new age remedies for energetic healing alike. Neuroscience says theyʼre the product of neurons firing at different speeds and through biofeedback can be associated with different state of consciousness, i.e., remembering, dreaming, thinking logically or... intuitively.
‘Thètaʼ, the brain wave frequencies of 4-8hz, operate at a level below consciousness. Led by subconscious processes, how might we relate differently to the visuals of our surroundings? How might we relate differently to each other?
The duo show of Lotte Wieringa and Mette Sterre: ‘Thèta Dreamʼ asks of us to take in the sensate world anew. And in that taking in—of colour, texture, tangibility—to allow ourselves to change, to be effected, and to relatedifferently. Together, Wieringa and Sterreʼs work sets the stage for intuitively feeling into a visual language of human and non-human bodies.
Wieringaʼs painting practice is led by the desire to awaken a deeper sense of sensory awareness and an interconnectedness with each other. She seeks a space where spoken language stops and alternative narratives of understanding can emerge. With repetitive marks, scratches and cold, bright colourways she creates a new zone of perception, portal-like, initiating an openness to the unforeseen.
Mette Sterre plays and performs with the unforeseen and the unseeable. Riffing on embodiment, her tactile suit summons the futuristic potential of feeling. In an act of resistance to singular subjecthood Sterreʼs finger-forms repeat obscenely on a skin-like surface, poking into the space around them with a jittery, spluttery quality. Taking in the sensory information from this many fingers would be an unruly abundance of sensation. Maybe like Octopi our brains would need to spread out into our extremities: consciousness held beyond the head.
Text by Anastasia Shin
‘Thètaʼ, the brain wave frequencies of 4-8hz, operate at a level below consciousness. Led by subconscious processes, how might we relate differently to the visuals of our surroundings? How might we relate differently to each other?
The duo show of Lotte Wieringa and Mette Sterre: ‘Thèta Dreamʼ asks of us to take in the sensate world anew. And in that taking in—of colour, texture, tangibility—to allow ourselves to change, to be effected, and to relatedifferently. Together, Wieringa and Sterreʼs work sets the stage for intuitively feeling into a visual language of human and non-human bodies.
Wieringaʼs painting practice is led by the desire to awaken a deeper sense of sensory awareness and an interconnectedness with each other. She seeks a space where spoken language stops and alternative narratives of understanding can emerge. With repetitive marks, scratches and cold, bright colourways she creates a new zone of perception, portal-like, initiating an openness to the unforeseen.
Mette Sterre plays and performs with the unforeseen and the unseeable. Riffing on embodiment, her tactile suit summons the futuristic potential of feeling. In an act of resistance to singular subjecthood Sterreʼs finger-forms repeat obscenely on a skin-like surface, poking into the space around them with a jittery, spluttery quality. Taking in the sensory information from this many fingers would be an unruly abundance of sensation. Maybe like Octopi our brains would need to spread out into our extremities: consciousness held beyond the head.
Text by Anastasia Shin