This is a paraphrased version of the speech performed on January 11 at the opening of Growing Pains at Willem II in Den Bosch. Growing Pains will run until January 26, and is an exhibition with works of ULRIXA.

In Growing Pains, ULRIXA steps outside the context in which it originated: the Apprentice Master program of Kunstpodium T.

Last spring, I met ULRIXA for the first time. It was at Kunstpodium T in Tilburg, and I remember it as a cold and dark evening although it was March. ULRIXA told me she was struggling with her identity in a conversation that felt very genuine and intimate to me, especially since we did not know each other. The intimacy of the conversation perhaps reflected the intimacy of the works that she showed.

I remember a tiny bright blue window made from the netting you can find on scaffolding when buildings are being renovated, I remember different views from her different homes. I remember a lot of self-portraits, some colorful and some not at all. I assumed they said something about the different sides of her. I remember her showing artworks she was never satisfied with before, which is a very ballsy thing to do, or cuntsy I should maybe say. I remember maps of the places she grew up in, and I remember a story about an artwork she started, and her mother finished.

I met her for the second time a few days ago, in the space of Willem II. The install of Growing Pains was in full swing. For everyone who knows the spaces of Kunstpodium T it’s not hard to believe ULRIXA experienced growing pains. The small and maze-like architecture of Kunstpodium T granted comfort and safety for the personal stories I just mentioned. These cigar factory halls pushed ULRIXA to scale.

The intimacy has not fully left the work of ULRIXA. You will find a blue window again that invites you to have a look into her world. Her world of being a pregnant woman at the moment, a curious pregnant woman apparently, because she peaked into the future with having AI make a portrait of her kid. Perhaps the most intimate are her new self-portraits, which are not portraits from her physical appearance but from the energy around her.

I would say her energy is different from last time. She did grow, and not only physically. The view from her window has changed a lot because of it, and with that perhaps her view on other things. Building on her personal experiences and her moral compass, her works are now less intimate and more outward, focusing on big issues. In the work on the back wall, she connects her bond with the plants around her house with the burning Amazon, and when I look at it I personally cannot help imagining the footage I encountered in the past days showing LA on fire. As a woman that needs to present herself publicly, issues like femininity and confidence and what that looks like combined, arise. She captured that in the power pose installation, where she uses glass negatives to find out whether the effect of power posing is as helpful as one of the most watched TED talks claims. Then there are sound bites as a result of ULRIXA looking into her culturally ambiguous background, which is a more widely relevant story since so many people have migrated, and so many more people will migrate, both mentally and physically, having to adapt to a new part of their identity. An identity that is not only tied to yourself, your body and your aura, but also to your context.

ULRIXA is many identities. When I look I can see that clearly, but I also clearly see where they overlap. I invite you all to discover the diversity in ULRIXA’s many faces, and the way they look alike.