Hadassah Emmerich was born in 1974, in the Netherlands
She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium

Hadassah Emmerich explores recurring themes like the body and identity, the sensory and the sensual, the commodification of the erotic and the exotic. The sensuality of her painting resides not only on the surface of the erotic image, but also in her refined use of colour and technical execution. Since 2016, Emmerich has worked with a new painting technique, using stencils cut from vinyl flooring, which she covers with ink and then impresses onto canvas, paper or a wall. Referring to the visual language of advertising and Pop art, she creates images that both aestheticise and problematize the female body. She depicts the paradox of simultaneous attraction and repulsion, intimacy and cool detachment, seduction and critique. In this way, Emmerich succeeds in making the act of looking truly provocative.

Hadassah Emmerich studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht, HISK Flanders and Goldsmiths College, London. She had exhibitions at Bonnefanten, Maastricht, NL; Kunsthal Kade, Amersfoort, NL; The Royal Palace, Amsterdam, NL; CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels, BE; ISA Art Gallery, Jakarta, ID; De Garage, Mechelen BE; KANAL, Brussels, BE; Museum Arnhem, NL; GEM, The Hague, NL; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, DE; SCHUNCK, Heerlen, NL. Her work is represented in the collections of a.o. Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Federal Government, Brussels; Rijksmuseum Amsterdam; Bonnefanten, Maastricht; Flemish Parliament, Brussels; Kunstmuseum Den Haag; Museum Arnhem, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Hague.

Born into a working class Afrikaans family during the height of Apartheid, Kendell Geers quickly found himself fighting a Crime Against Humanity on the front lines of activism and protest. Running away from the military regime and a six year prison sentence, he escaped to London in 1988 as a political refugee. In 1989 he moved on to New York where he found employ as Richard Prince’s full time assistant. Following the release of Nelson Mandela, Geers returned to South Africa in 1990 to help build the new democracy.

From his strong experiences as a revolutionary, he developed a psycho-social-political practice that held ethics and aesthetics to be opposite sides of the very same coin, spinning upon the tables of history. In his hands, the discourse of art history is interrogated, languages of power and ideological codes subverted, expectations smashed and belief systems transformed into aesthetic codes. The raw energy of a Punk attitude is blended with the visceral visionary philosophy of poets like Rimbaud, Blake and Burroughs in an uncanny cocktail of unexpected contrasts.

A European by descent, an African by birth, Kendell Geers work embodies the contradictions of his identity, being both Animist and Mystic, Shaman and Alchemist, Punk and Poet. The warp of popular culture is woven into the weft of poetry, painting, literature and ritual. He uses experience to colour perception, spiritualising matter and materialising spirit, mocking tradition like an iconoclast whilst celebrating history like a Medieval Monk.

Believing that art is as political as it is spiritual, Kendell Geers’ varied practice cannot be simplified, cannot be reduced to cliché or fashion. Working as an artist, musician, designer and writer, his strategies are without compromise because he believes that “Art changes the world – one perception at a time.”

Kendell Geers was born in May 1968, Johannesburg, South Africa
He lives and works in Brussels, Belgium