My work often touches on mythological themes and carries symbolic or archetypical imagery. My disciplines merge at the point where I explore the Matrixial Borderspace theory of Bracha Ettinger and the concept of universal balance. I look at the relationship between the paradigms of male and female, the transgression of boundaries and the strong connection between (wo)man and beast.
I explore working in the matrixial borderspace through my position as an artist/mother and in site specific performances use the body and nature as exploratory sites of convergence and co-emergence.
Vanmechelen delivered a presentation and her short film The Bee and the Great Mother was screened at Motherhood and Creative Practice: Maternal Structures in Creative Work, School of Arts and Creative Industries, London South Bank University in September 2015.
This was an international and interdisciplinary conference that addressed ongoing debates about hospitality, solidarity and encounter as concepts in creative practice, and how they relate to contemporary issues of mothering. Scholars and artists contributed works and presentations which explored the creative embodiment of intergenerational trauma and the complex territory of mother-daughter relationships, and brought into dialogue social, scientific and artistic perspectives.
Her film Epona was selected for Horse at Void Derry by curators Maoliosa Boyle and Mark Wallinger in 2015.
Vanmechelen is the recipient of the Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award 2015, the Kerry County Council Creative Work Development Bursary 2016 and she is also a recipient of EU funding under the Creative Europe (Culture Sub-programme) 2014– 2020.
more about Mieke…
Born in Antwerp Belgium (1974), Mieke Vanmechelen lived in the polders of Zeeland, the westernmost province of the Netherlands until moving to Ireland with her family as a child. Vanmechelen studied at Trinity College Dublin, BA. (1996) and Crawford College of Art & Design, MA. (2014).
Vanmechelen’s cross-disciplinary works are consistent outcomes of a singular searching artistic sensibility, evolving from a combined affinity for the psychoanalytical and a deep sense of connectedness to the cycles of nature. Her main area of enquiry relates to the psychological realms concerned with the processes of ‘subjectivisation’ and involves exploring themes such as sexuality, familial bonds, traces of memory and the order of time. A sense of place pervades her practice and she draws on the imagery of cultural history and an inherent connection between living beings and the natural world.
