LeoXIII & de fabriek — Photo: Peter Cox
Bo Stokkermans focuses on collaboration and interaction with people, institutions, and various types of media.
He works with various machines such as 3D printers, embroidery machines, and CNC milling machines, as well as materials ranging from oil paint and foam clay to felt. From a painterly and performative approach, he regards these interactions as a network of fully-fledged relationships.
His work raises questions such as:
- How can the performative qualities of ‘artisthood’ function as an emancipatory and embodied method of collective being?
- How can this create a space to re-center ourselves, our beliefs, our needs, and our togetherness within a violent and inescapable system that continually demands we sacrifice ourselves for labor?
- How can we understand artisthood as the performative expression of the malleability of conditions—something accessible and intrinsically part of the human condition?
- How can we survive, not as a conforming, systematic, and formal relic of societal structures, but as a transgression of this confirming state of survival? As something that does not blindly seek preservation?