//About me
My name is Moira
and I am a painter, sculptor and analogue animator from the Netherlands, based in Paris since 2025. I graduated in 2023 from a four year study programme in Fine Arts at MAFAD in the Netherlands and won the Gilbert de Bontridder Award for my graduation project titled Embrace me. I view art mainly as a form of resistance: to me art is a way of reimagining common societal constructs, a way of subverting established power hierarchies and unsettling what is often perceived as natural, neutral, or obvious.
I believe that art can and even should be uncomfortable, that it should not placate the masses but rather provoke and inspire people to think critical thoughts and develop new ideas. Through my art, I try to push back against many of the dominant (often Western, colonial, patriarchal, and heteronormative) narratives and constructs that have shaped our world, our morality, and sociocultural practices. Many of my works can be seen as feminist, decolonial, or queer reinterpretations of well-known stories and myths, where narratives are turned upside down and recognizable symbols are distorted and reimagined.
While I create artworks in many different mediums, I always try to use and recycle what materials I already own and to properly research the materials I use to avoid using products that are damaging to the environment or have complex ethical implications. Many of my artworks are the result of long periods of research, during which I get familiar with certain theoretical concepts, popular narratives, political and religious ideologies, symbolism, and myths, to be able to develop a well-founded idea or critique that I an then articulate and make visible through my work.
//About me
Since 2022
I have been working primarily with textiles in my artistic practice: most of my artworks consist of tapestries of roughly six square meters that I create by drawing sketches in chalk on unbleached cotton. I then paint onto the cotton either with acrylic paints or with paints that I mix from pigments and a medium – this used to be acacia gum but since the crisis in Sudan I cannot see this as an ethical product anymore and am currently looking for a new medium. While painting my tapestries, I leave out the lines drawn with chalk which will fade over time and leave the clear blank lines that often remind people of the lines left during Batik processes. I then often embroider my tapestries with glass beads and sweet water pearls to put emphasis on the parts of the tapestry that to me are most important or most symbolic for the story I want to convey.
As handicrafts using textiles, such as sewing, weaving and embroidery have historically been practiced by women, they have not traditionally been embraced as ‘official’ or ‘professional’ artist practices, but rather as housework or even as hobbies. The use of textiles in my work therefore carries its own feminist message: that art should not be defined or shaped by the archaic and often patriarchal ways of the art world and instead push back against any attempt to label or restrict it.