ELIZABETH ALDERLIESTEN 
Dordrecht (NL), 1972

Elizabeth Alderliesten is a Dutch photography-based artist. As global citizen she currently lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.

ARTIST STATEMENT

How does the 'Wild Woman' reconnect with herself? 
How does she find her inner strength, creativity, and intuition?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an American Jungian psychologist and author, introduces the concept of the 'Wild Woman'.

In my work, I explore this idea: the woman who embraces her authentic self.

I explore and investigate the complexity of women and their dual nature. In today's modern society, with its many demands, they have been shaped by external expectations, their surroundings, or past events. As a result, they tend to hide and enclose themselves in their desired environment.

For me, the ability to adapt, especially in social interactions, represents an ongoing metamorphosis of human existence. Reconnecting with my instinctual nature is a continuous quest; to reveal or conceal, realizing that without darkness, there is no light, and vice versa. In my photographs, I use my subjects to aesthetically represent these continuous processes of change and adaptation.

My photos are images in themselves rather than images of something. Each image is contained within itself, creating its own time and space. I see them as free and poetic visual rhymes that may elicit stories in the viewer’s imagination. The transition from one moment to the next in which the viewer uses his fantasy to feel what the next moment will be. In my photographs, I use my subjects to aesthetically depict this process of constant change and adaptation.

Time is an important factor in my images, but also in my work process. The delay that occurs by mostly shooting images analog, but also the magic the process evokes. Moments of imaginative transformation in which no action takes place.

In an intuitive way I collect images, mostly on analog film. The negative is my starting point from which I shapes my images. The real interpretation of the image takes place during printing in the darkroom or while manipulating the digitised negative on the screen.

Combining old and new processes stimulates me to research more deeply. Materiality within that plays an important role.

BIO

FRESH EYES Photo selected her as one of the 100 greatest emerging photography talents in Europe of 2020, she is featured on one of the four covers of the yearbook. She is also included in GUP New Photo Talent yearbook 2020. 

She attends the year-long Photobook Workshop with Nearest Truth this year. In 2022 she participated in a workshop with Dirk Braeckman and Brad Feuerhelm in Athens. From 2020 until 2022 she attended Le Masterklass with Klavdij Sluban in Paris. In 2019 she followed an Masterclass with Machiel Botman in Amsterdam. She graduated from the Fotoacademie in Amsterdam in 2019.