Sanne de Haan (1989) finds inspiration for her work in deeply personal experiences. Varying from photography and video, to performance, embroidery, and painting, the medium she works in depends on her chosen subject matter. In Fruit Basket (2018) — her graduation project at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem — she played with curiosity and voyeurism by photographing her fellow-students in the nude in their own studios. Seemingly offering the spectators a look behind the scenes, she thus showed the artists as ‘wild animals’ in their natural habitats. In Embroidery (2019-ongoing), a series of embroidered works, De Haan zooms in on a technique considered to be a typically female pastime. By infusing kitschy cross-stitch pieces with her humorous and contemporary approach, she evokes an unexpected surrealist effect.
At Prospects, her triptych The best day of my life (2023) shows an extremely personal and profound moment in her life: the birth of her child. De Haan suffered from postpartum psychosis and was therefore unable to comply with the stereotypical ideal image of mother and child — to put it mildly. The title thus has a double meaning. In the triptych, the birth itself is flanked by the first view of the child, and by the afterbirth. By portraying these three phases in a meticulous, realistic, and uncompromising way, the artist wanted to make sense of this event. During the act of painting she aimed to retrieve the beauty and wonder of childbirth while simultaneously trying to process this traumatic event.
Text: Esther Darley
Translation from Dutch to English: Marie Louise Schoondergang