“Taste of play, ambiguity and surrealism”
DNA from the series Lexicon 2007 © Viviane Sassen and Stevenson
As you soak up the last bits of the late heatwave, come to find more warmth in Viviane Sassen’s world. The celebrated Dutch photographer’s surreal tones guarantee visitors to find themselves slowly descending into a controlled, stylised, balanced—world. Commanding the Foam building, her displayed oeuvre spans a few decades and continents. Opening with Sassen’s most well-known pieces captured mainly in East Africa between 2004 and 2011, inspired by the part of her childhood spent in Nyabondo, Kenya. She retains a specific kind of synergy throughout her work between light and shadows, the intensity of colours and the starry sky.
Self Portrait 1990 © Viviane Sassen and Stevenson
Viviane Sassen’s work finds its profound complexity in composition and colour, a quality immediately evident in our first stop from the exhibition the Lexicon series from 2013, where themes of death, mourning, desire, and dreams rule. The alluring combination of coffins, graves and vegetation with portraits elevates her art into the surreal. Sassen skillfully crafts a personal narrative on this delicate edge onto which she can project her own thoughts and feelings. Unexpected, uncanny bodies are presented contorting in ways that leave you unable to divert your gaze. Her structured approach to the body appears again in her Self Portraits from 1989-1999, where Sassen frames herself crawling in and out of the codes of eroticism. Her lived experience as a fashion model informs this response to the “male gaze”; she reclaims her body through her craft with each image capturing a delicate balance of sensuality and distortion.
Dior 2019 © Viviane Sassen and Stevenson
Our final stop takes us to the liminal corridor between the staircase and upper floors, where Sassen’s fashion photography is prominently displayed. In these quiet moments of discovery, the exhibition truly comes alive, as three projectors work together to cast a seemingly endless reel of images, drawing viewers into a captivating rhythm. A journey that feels heightened with the right company by your side — as you let your eyes drift effortlessly from one image to the next. Through the exploration of the exhibition’s carefully curated corners and hidden spaces, a thread of intimacy emerges. Each photograph unveils fragments of Sassen herself—a lifetime of memories and inspiration made tangible through her lens, capturing the invisible ties that bind us all.
On show till January 12th! We’d also recommend joining the free guided tours every Saturday here!
