Sanne Kabalt

Sanne was interviewed by Giovanna Calainho for our article series Decomposing/Recomposing: articles for growing tomorrows seeds

With a look for subtle art, the artist Sanne Kabalt talks about her journey as an artist and her creative process. From publishing literary articles to starting her own art book, literature has always been part of her life. During expeditions around the world, she brings her own style of mixing poetry and photography into the artistic world.  

Can you tell me a bit about what you are currently working on?

S: Yeah sure. What I’m mainly working on right now…I went on a residency, exactly a year ago in October last year, to the high Arctic, almost North Pole, on a ship sailing around and going on land next to the glaciers and icebergs and everything. I have already done a lot of work based on this experience. I have some of it in exhibitions in Tilburg and the Provinciehuis in Haarlem right now. But I still continue playing, because I made a lot of materials, I wrote, I photographed, and made videos, with different types of analog and digital cameras…I made a lot. I feel like I tried a few things in the space at the exhibitions but I also would like to make a book out of it. I’m very much interested in books that are an object of art in themselves. So the book is supposed to be not just the work I made but be a work. And since there is also a lot of writing in it, I think it can work well because you have a bit more time and peace than in exposition spaces. And besides that, I’m working on a poetic novel that’s only text. I often spend the morning writing, and in the afternoon I make more of visual art. So I divided it like that. 

That’s so nice. And where do you usually find inspiration for your work?

S:  I would say in life. Some things happen. I noticed that sometimes, things make a deep impression on me, and then they end up in my art because they need more time, they ask for more time for me. An example is a work that is now in an exhibition. I visited a close friend the day after her mother died and she told me that she had looked at her mother’s family album and she said all the photographs had changed. So, her mother was different, somehow, in the photographs. That was fascinating to me. And of course, that day I was only there as a friend to support her, but a few months later, I asked her if I could do something with this if we could talk about it, and I did like a long interview with her, a conversation, and I used part of that dialog in a work. And I decided to portray her mother and display her behind a colourful glass. It’s made in such a way that you see a portrait, but it’s also very hard to see because there’s something in between that alters the way you look at someone. It gives a sort of unreachable person. And that’s a way for me to translate or to think about the experience of having that conversation with that friend, so that’s an example of the use of being something in life and thinking ‘I can’t let this go’ and ‘I keep turning into this moment’ and in order on how to deal with it, I really enjoy having the tools to make something from it. And then it can also be an experience not only for me but also for others as well. That’s also the beauty of it I think. 

There really is. I think it also takes a lot of sensibility for you to take something from real life and put it in your work. 

S: Yes, it is nice that you say that sensibility or sort of sensitivity. I don’t want to critique anyone’s art, but in some cases, art has to be this sort of scream tarara this is my statement and I think I’m often the opposite. I’m sometimes get called by people almost too modest or too small or shy in what I make but I very much value this sort of nuance and very careful dealing with the subjects but that also means that you have to invest some of your time and also carefully look as a viewer to let it come in in a sort of understanding. 

It’s interesting that you say that and I agree. I feel like subtle art isn’t as recognized as art pieces that scream at your face.

S: Yes, I’m afraid that’s true. 

Do you have a specific goal or message you want to share with your viewers through your work? 

S: I think the message varies depending on the project. I really work on projects and then I focus on something for a while, and then, a new thing comes up. But there are some recurring themes so a lot of my work is about loss or mourning in some way and now this new project is related to the loss of landscape or the loss of ice. I write about it on very personal levels so I relate it for example to becoming a mother and seeing the way that pieces of the glaciers break and fall into the water and become an iceberg, as sort of the glacier as the mother and the iceberg as the child, the way that it leads its own way from then on, just to give an example that it becomes very close to you and not something distant and abstract anymore and I like that kind of shifting of looking at something in a new way and in a more poetic way. I also enjoy it because the kind of subjects that I work with are often quite delicate and I enjoy having my own story that relates to other stories. When I created a piece of work about my father’s death, I found it fascinating how people responded with their own stories. It’s no longer just about my father – sharing it makes it something much bigger. By putting it out there, I make myself a bit vulnerable, and the viewer’s vulnerability becomes part of the experience too. 

And how do you choose the topics of the projects that you work on? 

S: I think it relates a bit to the answer I gave before. They choose me by staying in my mind, so when I take a photograph and I keep thinking about it, I think ‘Okay, there’s more to it’, and I want to dive right into it and write alongside it or present it in a different way. When I go to a place and think something is happening there, that becomes a starting point.  

Can you describe a little bit of your creative process? 

S: I think I write a lot, and I photograph not as much as you would think from someone who’s very much a photographer. But I spend a lot of time when I have all the materials. I have a pile of text and a pile of photographs. Often both are on the computer, but I print them and play around with them, so I make simple booklets, throw them away, make another form, and put them on the wall in a different way…Just by doing this, you sort of see which ones are interesting and which ones are rubbish. Sometimes I can get stuck thinking about something, but I really enjoy playing with it, and then sometimes depending on the project I also let it wait for a while. And go back a few months later or whenever I feel it needs to continue or spark new ideas. There is also something valuable that involves other people’s eyes and asking what they see. And I really like the idea that a work is never finished so even if I exhibit it or I put it in a magazine or a book, it feels like what it is now, I can sometimes see what if the photograph is bigger or the text longer..What if there’s a way around it or something, so in the next exhibition I might change it again. I really like that there is not a finished product, but you keep this playfulness in the work. 

And when you have creative blocks, what motivates you to continue?

S: Hmm, good question…I think I don’t do it often enough but looking at other people’s work can be really good. A while ago I did this sort of study. It’s a nice project by this initiative called CrossYart and they give study grants to artists in order to dive deeper into research in something that’s relevant to their practice. In my case, I was working with other artists working with images and text. This combination that I use, but I was really looking into how other people do it.  And spending days and days looking at books or exhibitions suddenly made me feel bigger and stronger suddenly. Even if I didn’t make anything new, just seeing and feeling like a family of people who work with the same kind of things and are also a bit in the grey zone, they’re not entirely photographers or entirely writers, they’re in between. But they find their forms and they also keep changing them. It made me feel so part of something that it also inspired me ‘ok next project!’ ‘I’m going to do it like this and then like this!’. And I wasn’t at all copying what they did but seeing their work encouraged me again to make some more of my own. I think that’s a really good way, also I usually have some nature in my work and also a lot of people, and just being in some beautiful nature also clears the mind but also makes me see things in a new perspective. 

What is your favourite project that you ever worked on? 

Oh that’s a tricky one. It’s funny, by the way, how you pose your question. I’m thinking like, the way I worked on it, was that my favourite or the way that it turned out. That’s maybe two different projects but the first one that comes to mind is one I already briefly mentioned. I once took a picture of my father sleeping on the couch while he was studying, so quite a long time ago I think 2008, or something, a long time ago, and I put it in a drawer, put it away. A few years later I found it, but then my father was no longer alive and the photo gained a new weight and also because he’s sleeping, as it resembles almost death in a way, because someone is lying there, eyes closed, and he has quite a serious expression on his face. I decided to write starting all my texts with “I took a photo of my father sleeping on the couch..” and just wrote thoughts that came. There’s seven texts and they are sort of thinking out loud about what photography is, how you sort of capture someone in a photo but also the relation between sleeper or death, or the longing for someone to wake up, or this sense of time travel of someone that still there in an image but not there anymore in the flesh. And I made the photo like this, in a frame where it can move. In exhibitions, I passed it around and put it in different places so that people could hold it as well, so they actually get the work in their hands.  I think I call that my favourite, because to me..there are a lot of steps involved, there is this old photograph, defining it, and rediscovering through writing about it, thinking about it, and then finding a way to put the photo in the exhibition. But it just came together very naturally, and having shown it a few times, it really moves people in a genuine way and it also always changes. So, I would put a text on the wall, and  the image would be all over, in the people’s hands or on the table, and some people would have read the text  and then seen the image or some people would have held the image and later read the text, so there’s also always this difference experiences and also of course, based on that person’s own past or their relation with maybe someone they lost. And I always feel still moved by the work myself, some works may feel more distant, and this one is so personal but also on a sort of artistic level, I really believe in it.

What are your long term goals as an artist? 

I have a few that I see as long, maybe not that long. So, on the things that I’m working on right now, I would love to make a book out of the project that I now call ‘glacier mother iceberg child’. I want to make an art book from this ice project, and I want to publish a novel. So both of these sound relatively simple, but they are big things. If they would actually happen, they would be big goals for me. I think sometimes, there are periods when I tend to write much more and others that I tend to do more visual work, and I often feel a bit like maybe I will lose one or the other. Lately it has been a little more writing focused, but long-term I would really love to keep these two strengths going. So, I think sometimes, it can be a bit like juggling that you also have this sort of solitude or focus for writing a book and then also keep exhibiting for example and keep doing that side. So I think if I long-term could manage to keep doing both long-term, that would be what I would love the most.