Situations

Visual artist Mariëlle Videler, Dutch, 1970, makes drawings, installations, objects and live art. Important in her work is the infiltration into existing systems with objects and installations, often accentuated by physical presence of her. This causes situations where fantasy and reality are opposed and in which confusion and ambivalence come into play. Drawings are created before, during and after these situations, sharpening the imagination.

In her projects Videler is obsessively creating scripts for herself, and shaping her environment. As far as possible, she makes everything herself: her clothes, objects, installations, books, acts and codes, in whatever medium. She creates removable or changeable structures that encourage action and give context to dialog. The aim of the work is encountering the other. Despite all scripts and obsessions, meeting the other is only possible by openness. This is a contradicting element in her work: on the one hand obsessive preparation, on the other hand live presence with an open mind, with possible misty and unpredictable results.

The working process of Mariëlle Videler is characterized by a high degree of manual labor, craftsmanship, and non-efficiency. The craft is a means of concentration, transmitting the self, animating objects. The repeated action as a ritual and as a counterbalance to the conceptual: the research of various media, materials, text and visual references.

Mariëlle Videler is a visual artist and works in Amsterdam, NL, or on location. Her work has been shown in art-initiatives, galleries, museums and festivals throughout the Netherlands (W139, Amsterdam), Europe (Kulturhuset, Stockholm) and recently in China (Today Art Museum, Beijing), Turkey (Sinopale International Biennale), Brazil (Galeria Vermelho, Sâo Paulo) and Curaçao (Instituto Buena Bista).
In 2004 she founded Performance Lab; a platform for experimenting with live art.
In 2003 she graduated from the fine art department of the Sandberg Institute (MFA) in Amsterdam. Before that she studied at the textile department at the Academy for Visual Art in Tilburg.
Videler's work is supported by the Mondriaan Fund.
(The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture)