New episode with Badriah Hamelink: Absolute power
Our latest episode is out now
Badriah Hamelink comes from a family of Dutch intellectuals. Her mother is a professor, while her father is the poet and writer Jaques Hamelink. Her grandmother founded the first Arab study centre in the Netherlands.
Her own artistic development however has leant more towards the intuitive than the rational, and when she followed her nose to Pietrasanta she sought mentoring from the artist Armen Agop. Badriah also credits Martin Foot who taught her many carving techniques.
Badriah Hamelink. Photo: Mitia Dedoni
Badriah’s abstract style explores the essence of our existence, and what lies beneath it.
Recently Badriah had a near-fatal accident due to a four-and-a-half metre fall resulting in heavy concussion. While recovering, she started playing around with and reworking old images she’d taken, by ‘mirroring’ some of them. What she discovered led her to an awareness of the importance of reflection and symmetry as a way of expressing the qualities of balance and equanimity.
Badriah Hamelink, OBEX 4, 2020, digital montage print, 100 × 100 cm
Badriah found that if you hold a shape against a mirror you immediately see something organic – even the most inorganic surface will seem to produce an organism in front of your eyes. It’s what our minds are wired to do.
As always, you can see photos that accompany our episodes on our website materiallyspeaking.com or on Instagram.
Enjoy listening.
Sarah Monk
producer, Materially Speaking