Reed van Brunschot

Being Peruvian and half-Dutch, as well as having moved through so many different countries all over the world, I have been exposed to and enamored by the vast contrasts in cultures and languages. Yet, have been most enamored by the similarities we share in basic non-verbal visual communication. What’s left when you are displaced and must communicate with silence? We often resort to using objects, body language or general experiences we have as people. I like the awkwardness of this state and I use this accessible visual language of simple iconography in my artworks as a basis for narrative and connectivity. Through awkwardness there is both humor and sadness and that is an interesting and human place to explore.

As a visual artist, I work in several mediums predominantly sculpture, installation, performance & video. I am fascinated with our relationship to spaces. Specifically, the liminal spaces which require pause. I often use the language of accessible domestic quotidian objects and rematerialize them or animate them to reiterate their temporality or sometimes I resize them into miniature or gigantic forms to challenge their correlation to the viewer. Through these actions, I aim to draw the viewer in with the familiar but uncanny.

My subject matter majorly focuses on the domestic, labor, displacement, and memory. My own upbringing, of being a nomadic multi cultural coming from a working-class background creates this need to want to make things accessible in order to communicate to many, not just some. By using a basic iconography in my art, I feel that many viewers can find a space to enter and relate to the work. My aim is to create a perceptual shift that complicates the objects common meanings and instead adds dimension, traction, or pause.