ARTIST STATEMENT
In times of unrest, I see drawing and painting as acts that hold what power tries to erase.
OBJECT! (a wordplay) Girl in a Blue Burqa objects to the forced invisibility of Afghan women and girls under Taliban rule. The piece becomes both witness and protest: an object that objects—insisting Afghan women’s lives remain seen, named, and defended.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ria Vanden Eynde is a Belgian painter with degrees in mathematics and applied ethics. After studying at the City’s Academy of Arts, she continues to deepen her practice through independent study, including courses with artists like Zoey Frank. Her first group show, A Book About Death, was held at the Emily Harvey Gallery in New York (2009). A residency at Brooklyn’s Art Cluster Gallery resulted in the solo exhibition Changing World (2018), which was reviewed in Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. She has also published essays in WEAD Magazine and REPHRASE Magazine.
Vanden Eynde’s work weaves feminist embodiment, psychic life, and cultural critique. She explores how the body asserts itself as both archive and site of protest — a living, fleshed place where culture and conflict are held and potentially transformed; a place from which art must speak. Her recent project A Dream Scroll, is sourced from Jungian dream analysis and alchemy, forming a body of paintings, enhanced monotype prints, and essays that blur critique, memory, and myth.
© Ria Vanden Eynde