World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 503 - Shani Leseman
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World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 503 – Shani Leseman
Shani Leseman is one of the young promising artists who appeared on the stage of the Theater aan het Spui in The Hague last month to receive the Piket Prize 2024. She was one of the three representatives of Painting. There were also representatives of dance and theatre. I spoke to her a few weeks later in the café of Filmhuis Den Haag.
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Shani makes paintings and ceramic sculptures and collaborates a lot with other artists. Her work is all about magic. Shani: “The invisible, mysterious, spiritual, non-scientific and emotional.”
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Magic
She has been interested in this all her life. Magic is a universal, timeless force. The fact that magic is something universal, and present everywhere in the world at all times, fascinates her. “I have always experienced a self-evidence in the belief or use of magic, and also received it from home.” Shani emphasizes that not everything has to be proven to exist. For her, the power of magic lies precisely in the domain of the intangible, the intuitive and the emotional. “It is not necessary to prove or explain everything in order to be able to experience it. The world is full of things that we cannot see or measure, but that are there. Magic reminds us that not everything has to be scientifically explained to be true.”
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The Power of the Sun
Shani calls her diptych As Above and So Below a key work in her development as an artist. They were nominated for the Royal Award for Free Painting and hung in the Royal Palace on Dam Square in Amsterdam. “It is a diptych in which one painting hangs above the other,” Shani explains. “Initially I thought the work was about the power of the sun and sun worship, but later I realized that the work actually had something else to say. It is about transformation, about death, about the physical and the astral. Making a painting feels like a magical act to me, in which something intangible becomes tangible. This work is an important work for me because it has given me confidence in the painting process. Through this process I also got to know the will of a painting and my handwriting on the canvas better.”
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She has always been an artist, or at least always wanted to be one. She went on to study it at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where she graduated in 2018. Since then she has been a professional artist. She makes a great variety of works and does many collaborative projects.
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Collaboration
She collaborates with Tommy Smits and Zinderin Kunst. “Zinderin Kunst is a ceramics workshop in The Hague for people with disabilities or people who are distanced from the labor market. It is a hands-on collaboration in which we often work on one work at the same time.” The results were shown in No Limits! Art Castle, among other things. She also often collaborates with G.C. Heemskerk, with whom she does many different projects. “We are both interested in the relationship between people and other animals. We are both animal rights activists and that is reflected in the work.”
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Pigeons
Together with G.C. Heemskerk, she recently completed a pigeon project in Rotterdam-Zuid. “Our goal is to change people’s perception of pigeons and to encourage them to live better with these animals and to take care of them where necessary. We have succeeded, at least with some of the public,” she says. A symposium will follow on 25 January 2025 in the Depot of Boijmans Van Beuningen, entitled Message from the Pigeon. Speakers include Billie Savage of the Stichting Stadsduivenhulp, which is fully committed to the welfare of pigeons, Eva Meijer, artist and philosopher who writes about the subject (including in NRC), and a video message from Mother Pigeon, an artist from New York.
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What is her experience of the art life?
“I love it. I enjoy making and feel free to make what I want. I have the time to explore my interests and learn more about them. It is the most fun work I can think of.”
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Finally, what is her philosophy?
“It is important that work is sincere and honest. That what you want to make really comes from yourself.”
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See also the video: https://vimeo.com/1017122375
Images
1) Portrait photo Shani Leseman. Photo: Shanna M. Casey, 2) On (the experience of) seeing a phantom/spirit/ghost, 3) Untitled, glazed ceramics, 4) Glass man – yellow, 5) The Meeting, 6) All of Us, 7) Installation view Symbiosis Series in collaboration with Isabel Cavenecia, POST Nijmegen. Picture Tommy Smits, 8) Mugwort, 9) Light/Matter, 10) Installation view Prospects, Art Rotterdam. Picture Tommy Smits
https://shanileseman.nl/https://www.piketkunstprijzen.nl/shani-lesemanhttps://www.instagram.com/shanileseman/https://inzaken.eu/2024/12/23/magie-centraal-in-het-werk-van-shani-leseman/
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