The horse girl universe is characterised through brightness, pink tones and girlishness. At its core lies a fascination with horses. This phenomenon drives a huge, thriving industry, which is relying on the dreams and emotional experiences of mainly young girls, shaping their lives through equine themed products. Part of those commodities are horse themed magazines, often written from a young girls perspective, portraying and feeding in the dreams of their audience. Nevertheless, first real life confrontations with the animals themselves, happen at riding schools through the school horses, which are specifically trained to offer a safer learning environment. Making the school horse the central figure in pulling the horse girl dream into reality.

In contradiction, the colours associated with the horse girls realm remain hidden to the horses, since their perception is limited to blue, yellow and grey tones. In “USHI” the discrepancy between the school horse and horse girl universe is highlighted, by using the commonly known commodity of a magazine. Young horse girls are given an insight into the riding school reality, the animals job, schedule and surroundings through the perspective of the protagonist, the school horse “Ushi”. The magazine acts as a gentle educational and reflective tool, providing information through the horse’s perspective to horse enthusiasts. To further emphasise the gap between dreamworld and equine reality, the magazine comes with an extra: a horse stable perfume, bringing the scent of the horses homes, into the horse girls homes. 

Date
2024

Type
photography
research
information design

Video footage from horses POV.

exaggerated artificiality 

“Nothing has been left to chance, there is only controlled space that has been made productive.”

- “DE-AD, Wim Cuyvers (from an essay about Eindhoven)”

In the Netherlands exaggerated artificiality is the known norm. The vast majority of landscape has been planned and constructed based on the dutch approach to landscape management, which is driven by practical needs and a strong aesthetic preference for order and efficiency.
In order to enjoy natural environments, wilderness has been transformed into accessible spaces, resulting in forming a particular perspective on the outdoors, blurring the lines between what has been engineered and what is natural.

Through photographic research conducted in Eindhoven, “exaggerated artificiality” captures temporary traces left behind by the gras seeding machine into the patterns for a woven blanket.
The same way there is a dependence on the warmth of a blanket, when it comes to enjoying a natural environment, there is a dependence on artificiality, since it’s the common norm.
The comfort of the blanket draws an analogy to the comfort, accessibility and safety created through engineering leisure environments. By choosing to translate grass through weaving machinery into an object of comfort “title”, ironically critiques the “technologist” nature, while being a “technologist” object.
How much does nature need to be engineered to be aesthetically satisfying andcomfortably enjoyable?

DATE

2024

TYPE

photography
research
textile design

Produced with EE Exclusives.

Alme

“Alme” investigates how personal connection to places can help to discover extreme changes in the landscape. Through photographic methodology, it documents, what has always been taking for granted, water flowing through the river “Alme” in Florentine’s hometown.
This project is a work in progress. Every year around the same time the river is documented at the same places to create a long time overview of it’s changes.

DATE
Exhibited in Winter 2022, Eindhoven

TYPE
photography
editorial
storytelling

true character

In collaboration with Basia Pruszynska for KVADRAT, we decided to bring the hard material “REALLY” back to its soft origin - textile. We focused on in-depth dying and texture investigation with a goal of finding ways in which color and texture can enhance REALLY’S natural qualities. 

REALLY is made out of textile waste that used to be thrown away during the process of fabrication. 

Date
2023

Type
circularity
experimentation
material manipulation
photography