Workshop for children (ages 5-12) by Stéphanie Baechler
Language: English/Dutch

In this workshop for children, Stéphanie Baechler addresses the importance of tactility for humans in a digital world, by letting participants discover new ways of working with clay. By choosing clay – an ancient, direct and innate material – Baechler wants to stimulate notions of play and spontaneity, emphasizing ‘being with’ material and exploring handwork. Focusing on hands themselves, as the universal symbol of creation, participants are invited to use gestures and hand movements to investigate the properties and qualities of clay and playfully depict their own hands in clay. After the workshop, they can bring home their unfired creations or decide to collectively destroy them for the clay to be recycled.

Please rsvp through arti@arti.nl

This event takes place in the group exhibition What My Hands Know, with new and existing work by twelve international and Dutch artists: Stéphanie Baechler, Sara Bjarland, Helen Dowling, Alex Farrar, Janina Frye, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Christine Moldrickx, Emmeline de Mooij, Charlotte Eta Mumm, Benjamin Roth, Evita Vasiljeva and Dieke Venema.

The exhibition focuses on artist practices where materiality, intuition and a process-driven way of working are central. The title refers to our interest in embodied knowledge and to hands as tools and transmitters of information between the inner and the outer world. In an increasingly digital world, our daily reality is often quite disembodied, and physical bodies are often viewed as obstacles rather than as carriers of knowledge. In this exhibition, viewers are invited to reconnect with their senses and to explore the tactile, material, and physical presence of the artworks. The exhibition comprises installation, sculpture and objects the broadest sense of the word: using a multitude of materials like textile, clay, aluminium, moving image, household objects, nail varnish, sound, latex, building materials, medical equipment, food and 3-D scans, the artists work across a range of both more traditional and new techniques like weaving, ceramics, drawing, editing, casting, laser cutting and assemblage. Each artist presents a unique perspective on the creative process, in which intuition, experimentation, transformation and a constant dialogue with materials is the driving force. The selection of works explore a broad range of both personal and current, universal themes, related to the relationship and interactions between the body and its inner/outer surroundings.

What My Hands Know is a project initiated by artists Sara Bjarland and Charlotte Eta Mumm. The exhibition is generously supported by Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunst and Iona Stichting. Individual artists also received support from the Constant van Renessefonds, Mondriaan Fonds, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Amarte Fonds, Stichting Stokroos and the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.