My name is Frida Berntsen (Nijmegen, 1997). I am a Dutch artist living and working in Arnhem. 

Textile invites touch, movement and action. It is unpredictable, every day, and multi-situated. When I was born, my grandmother made me a quilted blanket. Upon giving it, my mother instantly knew this was an object that she nor I could never throw away. By the time, attention and love my grandmother put into it, it exceeded any material value. First, I would sleep underneath it, later it was an object to play with. It has a tiny pocket that I used to hide things in.

Now, only the tips of my fingers fit in it and the material is thin and frail. My blanket lies on the bottom shelf of my cupboard, never to be used, nor thrown away. Here, a new layer of meaning is created by the object changing over time, in the way it looks and is used.

The inevitability for objects to change and the resistance people feel in them doing so is a recurring search in my artworks and the process of making them. At first, my works primarily showed the passage of time, depicting a memory. For example, Blueprint of matter, blueprint of mind started as a series of remnants of a dinner. Over time, I blended past and future tense. The

tablecloths were bleached, used, and woven into new works. The latest version is a white in white woven damask, that only reveals its image when stained, or in certain light.

When I started working with natural materials, decay became poignant. I set up a score to make one work per season, in a specific area of the garden. It brought new forms, often fluid without strict borders to surface. They looked and were temporal, needing (if wanted) protection to preserve them.

In Bodevaan I pay tribute to my family's heritage. I morphed my mother’s and grandmother's names, Bode (meaning messenger) and Vaandrager (meaning banner carrier). I tried to make a personal relationship veiled and the object performative. By the use of changant silk, shapes present themselves when you walk around it.

To end, I would like to share a quote by philosopher Cornelis Verhoeven that influenced me both in art and life.

“The better we get to know someone, the less we will be inclined to unmask him, because there he wears no mask, and because our knowing shares in an intimacy that excludes triomphant certainties and judgements.”

Cornelis Verhoeven, Merg en Been

Frida Berntsen, Arnhem