Monique Bastiaans
Belgium, 1954.
Works and lives in Spain.
Monique Bastiaans has been paying homage to nature for decades. Concerned over various ecological matters and the loss of biodiversity, her homage has become a message of alarm.
The artist recreates nature in its purest form. Tiny beings such as insects, unicellulars or viruses enlarged in disproportionate sculptures invite us to appreciate the greatness of the small and suggest us to exchange our superiority for respect.
Her works in public and open spaces include ephemeral interventions as well as permanent sculptures.
Sometimes the work is participatory: the public performs parts of a large-scale work. She also carries out actions in which the participants experience predominates.
Characterised by her formal exquisiteness and the use of innovative techniques and materials, Bastiaans has contributed throughout her artistic career an important research into the evolution of contemporary sculpture and installation, placing it within the field of the occupation and intervention of natural, urban and industrial spaces. Situated on the frontier between biological and industrial reproduction, we find in her work a constant exaltation of the natural, of vital energy, redirected through Land art as a metaphor between artifice and nature.