HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Green Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some writers and artists who’d sent in work the chance to be published here on the website. Keep an eye on our social media for more great work like this, in the run-up to the release of The Green Issue…
Lieske Weenink
Self Portrait
“I am a newly graduated artist based in Brighton. My practice currently focuses upon the themes of human relationships, health, psychological boundaries and time. The importance of storytelling and the power of an individual voice are also important strands that weave through my practice. I aim to explore these concepts through a mixture of film, sound, sculpture and installation, which express topics that are often left unspoken. The act of reciting our own narrative encourages us to see our part in our own individual grand narrative and the narrative of others. However, one thing storytelling and art have in common is that both can be deceptive. I create artificial environments from organic places and events so the reality presented feels uncomfortable and uncanny. These spaces create deep routed psychological boundaries between individuals and their experiences.
Self Portrait is a sculpture which focuses on green in relation to green screens. Green screens can create entire fabricated worlds behind individuals and in turn have the power to produce multiple modes of existence. Yet this excessiveness can present a lack of originality, due to the unlimited possibility of recreation and representation.
By physically building my head and arm height to create a self portrait with the green structure, I wanted to portray my feeling after completing education. My hands cover my eyes whilst pointing out in both directions, this physically unachievable stance explores navigation of change who I am and who I want to be. The physicality of this sculpture creates connotations around unrealistic expectations, portraying a mixture of indecisiveness yet with a deep resilience. This artwork is about the importance of change, the power of change and how we as humans negotiate changes we face in our lives.”