Evaluator Victor Sonna (Artist)

Complexity of living between two places. My artistic vison has been formed and informed by my genealogy: (Being Cameroon-born and now living in The Netherlands) My work is an ongoing project, with one of its central questions being not only about surviving logically but more about living ‘illogically’. My past and present are engaged in a permanent dialogue. For me, reality is a struggle between holding on to your origins and a continuous development. The transformative and regenerative power of destruction is my incentive to shake and stir up people’s minds. We need contrast, otherwise everything would be invisible. I deliberately blur the edges of my use and non-use of materials, making them flow into one another. That way, my materials and ideas get to play a new role and acquire a meaning that can be different from one person to the next! My work shows both the process of my research into aspects of being Human and the results of this research aims at confronting my audience with the beauty of imperfection and mortality. For me, an attribute doesn't necessarily carry the meaning given to it by its context. Instead, an attribute 'challenges' me into stripping it from its obvious contextual meaning and giving it a new significance. My personal experience as being between cultures is expressed in the work: “Love My Land”. The perception of the work from an insider – a Dutch person – is most likely an iconic work displaying the bicycle as a nation. My motive for making “I Love My Land” is to express the destructive side of judging Africans, participating in Dutch traffic. “Love” is written in the work as an homage to the Dutch accessible bike culture, thus it's experienced by me as a command for foreigners to 'love' the Dutch culture. In marked contrast,this project is also an expression of my ongoing integration.