Caroline Kolkman. Our world confuses me. So much, that I wonder what reality really is. I am real (I think), and I am pretty sure you are too, and so are the objects around us. But things get slightly more complicated when I think about thinking and perceiving. They seem to be the only ways in which I can connect with reality, but how reliable are they? Our senses can fool us, our memory can fail us, and our reason can… well, our reason can’t function without our senses and memory, can it?
Another approach to understanding reality is to define it as something we share, that which is seen and heard by others as well as ourselves. But this would imply that anything we experience privately and all the ways in which our experiences differ are not part of reality.
Well, it is precisely in these ‘non-realities’ that my interest lies.
Caroline Kolkman, Amsterdam (1987) studied at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, St. Lucas Academy in Antwerp and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Her practice includes photography, collage, sculpture and installation. Kolkman lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.
A Rambling Sack Of Mirrors
Is it possible to imagine or portray something exactly as it actually exists? Without interference from what and who we are, what we want, or even how we recognize and remember it? Or do these things, perceptually speaking, shape the world that surrounds us?
This thought inspired me to start the series A Rambling Sack of Mirrors. The title is meant as an endearing term for our mind. It illustrates the idea that our memories, expectations, and general state of mind reflect everything we experience. I have tried to mimic this situation by re-integrating photographs back into the location they were made and then capturing this re-integration as a photograph itself. Imposing on what is, with what was. Playing with what is and what could (or could not) be.
