Teja van Hoften

ZT

Almost all of Teja van Hoften's work is based on the biological functioning of the human body. She works with very diverse materials such as language, graphics, photography, artists' books, ceramics, bronze, textiles and plastic. Here you see a large, indeterminate pink organ or is it the fetus of a giant? A bright red glazed blood vessel, bronze sweat glands and porcelain feet as a temporary residence. Elongated textile shapes with the title body are hanging in the middle.

When I close my eyes, I'm so inside out. Or the other way around, I can go in and disappear through the esophagus. I have read that if you are a well-chewed morsel, you will be bubbling in the bubble bath of your stomach within eight seconds. Since that is the case, I surrender. Slip through the lock. Crawl between the intestinal villi and be carried away in the blood. I end up in the bronchi, all the way to the alveoli. I experience cell divisions down to the most intimate level. Mitosis, the moment when DNA is exchanged and the chromosomes rearrange themselves. I relive it over and over again.
Once outside I recognize it all around me. It is life itself.

When I walk or cut vegetables for soup, in the vegetable garden and on the street. Obviously they come from my hands: the stem cells, nerves, blood vessels, brain coils. They populate my studio. They make me feel like I matter too. There you go. As a piece of nature, I am also one among everything.