Eva Zain van der Horst

This interview is only available in english at the moment

Sometimes, even the most abstract pieces can trigger intense emotions in their viewers. The Mexican-Dutch multi-disciplinary artist Eva Zain van der Horst has the talent to show how simple initial feelings can transform into beautiful art pieces. Whether through carefully chosen music that complements the video’s aesthetic or by skillfully manipulating shadows and colors, Eva manages to transport viewers into another dimension through her abstract art. 

With just over a month to go until the exhibition Ground for Growth, in Nieuwe Vide, Giovanna Calainho talks to one of the artists, Eva Zain van der Horst, about her creative process and also about her event organization team, called Young Artist Event.

Besides working as an intern at Nieuwe Vide, you’re also one of the founders of the Young Artist Event, so what did you identify as community gaps for creating this team?

Eva: “The gap between people was what stood out to me. I don’t necessarily like to use the term ‘missing’ because of its negative connotation. Instead, I’d say I saw the potential around me.  I’m a really big people person and I grow energy with people around me. Slowly I started realising why that was and that everyone had a call, a passion, and a motivation, something that they were really good at. And everyone did something different and had their own signature in that, in various disciplines. I also came out of an internship where the hierarchy was really big so that made me feel that I wanted to create something with everyone, showing that we were able to do this, to have this unity, and to make the bar less high to have an exhibition. And then, actually, it was at the time, I tried once and everyone gave me so much good energy, that’s the moment at the Amsterdam Event, that I realised that was not a lot of this type of event in Haarlem. Around the Netherlands, especially in Amsterdam, you have to be in a bubble to know these events. The thing that I wanted to create is to go through the bubble, and that’s also why we make our network bigger and don’t create an exclusive bubble.  I reflected on it and recognized the need for young people to express themselves together, in unity.”

 

How are artists selected? Is it volunteer-based or through a selection process?

Eva: “It’s more selection-based, but of course, you can volunteer, and then you can sign up to go through the selection procedure. Each edition features a different selection of artists. The first editions were my friends, so it wasn’t a selection. And the third edition, we thought  ‘ok, how are we going to do this?’, and what we did to make it as fair as possible was that I went to different schools, and I also tried to do a lot on Instagram, so that people who don’t study or study in art academies also got to know about this and then, could sign up. It’s also important that we are open to people who are not studying their discipline. It is still sometimes hard because you have to judge. The selection is based on their age, how far along they are in their artistic practice and their level of motivation. Also, since one of YAE’s missions is to help young people take that first step and offer guidance in recognizing their worth, it is crucial to see what they have already achieved and if they are starting-based. It’s relevant that their names are not that big and they need the opportunity. It’s also important to have a variety of disciplines. Sometimes this makes the selection process challenging because we want to give the opportunity to people from different backgrounds, and we might receive 10 photography applications but only 2 for film. And that’s difficult sometimes for me, but yeah, that’s how we do it.”

As the upcoming 4th volume of the YAE, how do you feel about being one of the curators for the Ground for Growth Exposition while also being one of the artists? Is it a new experience for you? 

Eva: “This is not the first time that I’m exhibiting my work, I did it on the first and second one. But this is the first time I’m exhibiting my work from my fine arts studies. So, first, it was my film, and now it’s going to be my fine arts. It’s really exciting for me, but also for us because when we organised the event in Mexico, we were invited as the brand. So, the Ministry of Culture had a say in almost everything. So, that was kind of like a gallery space, but this is the first time we have had an influence on it, and we can have our say in the exhibition space. With those two things combined, it’s my first time showcasing my physical work on a more professional level. I’m really happy to see everything falling into place. I appreciate every step we’re taking to prepare for this event. It feels like the timing is just right – we’re not rushing, but we’re also not moving too slowly. This process has given me a lot of confidence in the Young Artist Brand, it feels like we’re becoming more professional.” 

And about your artistic process, what is your relationship regarding the topics that you choose to talk about in your works? Is it related to your opinions, to your life…How do you choose the subject?

Eva: “The topics are 100% related to the emotions that I experience, and it is 70% love. The emotion of love is a big subject, and how to find closure within that. My art is my form of expression, it helps me a lot to reflect on myself and what I experience. That’s how I work around my emotions as the concept part. In the visual part, I find a lot of inspiration in what I see around me. Like artists, exhibitions I go to, and I gather a lot of inspiration through that. The conceptual aspects that I experience, such as love and femininity, have been significant lately. These topics are connected to me through love and emotion. It is a cool journey that comes together. Now, with the works I’m showing for Ground for Growth, I see them as more personal—reflecting my journey with femininity, both within myself and with the people around me.”

 

Would you say then, that one of your biggest topics is more related to self-love? 

Eva: “No. No, I think not. This is really funny because it’s totally different from the work that I make for film. For film, it’s always more distant, more aesthetic, and more focused on what the watcher wants, while the stuff that I make for my studies now, what the printing is more, is what I need to do. But it’s not focused on self-love because the journey began a lot with how I view femininity with others and how I envy that. So, now, it’s more self-love but it began with how I sometimes romanticise and really put it on a pedestal, femininity and women, and my relationship to that.”  

 

Do you have any creative signature in your pieces? 

Eva: “I think, not totally abstract but has something soft and warm. I think it’s really hard to say that I have a signature, but people tell me that I do have one. Or that something looks like my work and I don’t know what it is but it revolves a lot around bodies and women’s bodies and emotions, I think. I do it aesthetically but I can’t explain what it is.”

 

You talk a lot about emotions, what you feel, and what you see. Do you have a clear goal that you want to communicate through your work? 

Eva: “Yeah, I want the person to feel something. It doesn’t matter to me if I transfer my feelings to them; that’s not important. What matters is that the person who sees it is triggered and feels something, whatever that may be.”

Connecting with the theme of the exhibition, do you believe that practising art in different forms has influenced your own personal development, as a person?

Eva: “10000%. Without the work that I create, I wouldn’t know myself, as well as I know myself now or feel as connected. It makes me really and really happy that I’m able to choose art as something that I do day to day because it’s actually therapeutic. And I think it allows me to reflect on myself way more. What I do, why I do stuff, and why I think in some ways. It allows me to pause in the moment, instead of jumping and missing 100 steps. It allows me to ask questions that I don’t necessarily need the answer to and that’s also really important.”

Would you say it was a challenge to create a piece surrounding the main theme? 

Eva: “Not at all. I think also because it complements my projects. It’s a really broad theme. And I think everyone has something with development. For me, yeah, I think it revolves around a lot of stuff I do. It wasn’t hard and it actually fits really well because from the two art pieces that I will be showing, one is about femininity, what I envy within the women or the people around me, and the other piece works around my own body and about myself and how that journey is. It’s a way of evolving and growing within the work itself.”

I saw one of your works related to bodies and femininity, and I really liked it. It consisted of different installations, one with the beginning of a torso and another with the rest of the leg. I’m not sure if they were all self-portraits. Do you usually take self-portraits, or do you use other models? 

Eva: “So the installation that I think that you saw was actually me taking pictures of other people but there are 3 works that I’m going to show in transparent glass, and that’s me and it is my body. However, that’s something really new to me. I just entered that and it’s my latest work. Usually, I take pictures of girls, women, and other people but I like to make myself like a…personna. I showed the work to one of my friends and she was so shocked because I’m not like a person who’s open with my own body. For me, that’s new but that’s also new for those who are used to my work. I really like to play with it, but still stay anonymous since the pictures are abstract. They are always abstract.”

What are your long-term goals as an artist?

Eva: “I am planning to go international and work abroad, preferably in South America. I hope to create and collaborate with people from different cultures. I also want to get to know other people and their art, and how they translate their culture into their art. While I’ll still spend time in the Netherlands, I don’t want to stay there permanently.”

Do you think that travelling to a lot of countries and knowing the culture behind them, is going to have an impact on your art? 

Eva: “Well, to be honest, I don’t think so.  At the moment, not. But now, I’m doing a new project that involves an archive for my family in Mexico, but that does influence that because my family is there. It does influence when we talk about the aesthetic, so like, what I told you, I look around how people exhibit or what they use, and that influences when you go to another country, go to another exhibition, and see how people do it in other countries, so aesthetically wise it does. But in terms of the topics I explore, it doesn’t have an impact.”