Margriet van Breevoort

Margriet van Bredevoort was born in Amsterdam in the year 1990, she studied at the Hogeschool door de Kunsten in Utrecht and received her diploma with honours in the year 2013. Instagram: @margrietvanbreevoort

Her oeuvre enters a thin line between the exceptional and the impossible and makes the viewer experience an extraordinary world through the use of her hyper-realistic sculpture techniques. In her work Van Breevoort tries to emphasise a network of contradictions which include the dialectic between man and nature, the organic versus the technical, and the guilt and innocence.

She puzzles about a nature that can only exist under the condition of man and tries to reflect this doubt about what people call nature in the Anthropocene, in her work. Questions about authenticity therefore drive the creation of many of the works she makes. Can we still speak of the “natural” when everything that man considers to be nature has been influenced by and exists by the grace of man himself?

Man and nature, how do they relate to each other? What remains of our animalistic origin? And what influence does our presence have on nature?
In my body of work, these questions manifest themselves as a synthesis of animal, nature, human and technology. These hybrid creatures and landscapes form a hybrid world, where man and nature enter into unconventional science-fiction-like relationships with one another.


With my work I portray those worlds in order to emphasize a network of opposites: the organic versus the technical and the duality of culture and nature.


I marvel at aspects of our everyday life that are labeled "normal", but would feel at home in sci / fi novels. This amazement is expressed in my work as an enlargement: a caricature of reality. Surrealism serves as the medium that gives me the creative freedom I need. In this way I confront the viewer with the possibility of another world, which might, all in all, not even be that imaginary.




The questions that correspond with my work always touch on the relationship between people and their environment; the natural versus the artificial; and the notion of nature within a human-distorted world.The results of these questions are beings with anthropomorphic features, I confront the viewer with a boundary: the dividing line between the exceptional and the impossible; the desirable and the repellent; and the vulnerable and the dominant.
These beings do not exist in the world as we know it. But through special-effect sculpting techniques, I try to create believable, lifelike figures with human characteristics. In this way I try to make the viewer believe for a moment in this world that I create. The creatures interact with their immediate environment and sometimes seem to reflect a sense of unease and vulnerability. The question remains: do we sympathize with the being that does not feel at home here, or does this being sympathize with us because this is our home ...? They suggest a world in which different rules apply and represent a freedom that the viewer does not know, but may or may not long for. 



Ever since mankind started to think and has put itself at the top of the food chain, there has been a certain anthropocentrism - the concept of man being the center of existence.
We seem to have forgotten that we are only a very small part of a gigantic ecosystem. Nature represents "the other", nature has no soul or voice, cannot stand up for itself and is subordinate. Unconsciously (and consciously) man maintains this way of thinking in order to be able to continue the use and manipulation of nature. At the same time, we see nature as something untouched and sublime. How should these contradictions be resolved? By us? Will evolution find a solution by itself? Should we stop thinking in contradictions? 


Culture is an extension of man which is ultimately an extension of nature, but nature is gradually becoming more and more culture (I always find the over-cultivated, blocky Dutch landscape seen from a plane window a nice reminder of this). 

The dichotomy in terms that man himself has fabricated makes it difficult to return to a pure and natural world. The solution is of course to move fórward to a sustainable hybrid world where nature and culture work together; where man once more becomes part of the ecosystem "earth".

Mankind has torn itself away from its evolutionary origins through the learning of advanced skills and seems to have come to a point where it can fully dictate its environment and future. This can provide opportunities that I, and perhaps no one, can judge. 

I am inspired by these "possibilities" and this "nature" that can only exist under the condition of man and try to reflect in my work the doubts about what is called "nature" in the Anthropocene. Questions about authenticity therefore drive the creation of many of the works I make. Can we still speak of the 'natural' if everything that man considers to be nature is influenced by and exists by the grace of man himself?