Ietje Meerman

Why do flies fly around cows? Are deer musical beings? And what does it mean to fall in love with the bleeding-heart pigeon? 

Ietje Meerman creates and tells poetic narratives about animals that contain fictional elements. These stories stem from the tension between observations, memories and pretending, where the latter allows her to invent and find ways to come closer to an understanding of animal beings. Ietje is searching for a broader way of thinking about animals, secretly hoping to also find an understanding of being human. She feels that it is precisely in human-animal relationships that we can learn from each other. She thinks anthropomorphism can be a good method to achieve this, because by relating to each other and finding similarities, empathy between humans and other animals can come into existence.

Ietje asks herself what the consequences are of her ways of representing animals. How to involve animals and their perspective into her work? How can she tell a story with animals about being animal and being human? What forms can the animal take on within her work?

Ietje sees her work as a ‘verdichting’: as in being a fiction, a mythologization, a condensation, an aggregation, an act of poetry. Full of sweet snouts, carefully chosen words and poetic softening. During FULL:FILLED Ietje will show her graduation work Over dierbaren en de aard van het beestje (loosely translated: On loved ones and the nature of the animal), a selection of narratives elaborated in videoworks, performances, texts, drawings, video stills and photographs.

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