IT LOVES TO HAPPEN *

The conjunction and encounter between the wool and the artist. Anna van Dorsten (Leiden, 1965) works from an open, inquisitive perspective and is receptive to what is going to happen. If she is lucky and if it wants to happen, a moment of rapprochement between the material, the wool and the intuition occurs.

Van Dorsten has increasingly been fascinated with the beauty of the female body, in all stages of life. With the womb as a splendid, exciting source of inspiration. A place of safety and nurture, cut off from the outside world, in co-existence, vibrant, nourishing, healing. And after the birth, the nest as a safe basis for the family.

Great sources of inspiration are the  ‘Kunstformen der Natur’, so aptly written and drew by Ernst. Haeckel. For instance the shape of a star coral with vertical plates (septa) which she associates with the vulva, as symbol of women’s strength; “l’origine dus monde”. Strength/power that is characterised by openness and vulnerability. The gap between two slats has a hypnotic effect. Her works invite interaction, they can be shaped to be more open or more closed; playing with femininity, with the sensation of being admitted or not.

* From Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, formulated in the past tense: IT LOVED TO HAPPEN. Chris Thompson describes, in his book ¨FELT - Fluxus, Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama¨  the word “it” as: “This “it” operates as a transpersonal agency, something that cannot be willed but only prepared for.”