Inez Engbersen

Making the invisible visible

In my work, I try to capture the vulnerability of the person I portray. I also try to portray their resilience, and at the same time, it's my attempt to give meaning to life. What moves me about people is not their certainties, but their vulnerability. I strive to capture those moments when life is raw, when someone grieves, experiences shame, loss, or fear. How do we, despite this, give direction to our existence? The dark side of life doesn't necessarily have to be negative, but can be experienced as something that shapes and perhaps even strengthens us.

The traces of what we experience leave their mark, sometimes literally, sometimes in how we look, remain silent, or choose. I feel inspired by artists like Tracey Emin, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Bourgeois, and Marlene Dumas. They dare to make their inner world, their pain, their stories, and their experiences tangible through language and imagery. What appeals to me in this is their honesty and rawness. They make visible what often remains invisible.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas touches me with his idea that we encounter the ethical call in the face of the other: that we cannot ignore the other, that we are co-responsible for the other and must treat each other with respect. Boris Groys, also a philosopher and art critic, describes the portrait as a likeness of the person. Not only how someone looks, but also how they look, stand, or are present. This makes the portrait a kind of mirror, how the person portrayed relates to the world, the space, the other, and the viewer.

A portrait, therefore, shows not only a face but also the relationship between who is looking and who is being looked at, and what may be shown or, conversely, remains hidden.

I have drawn people who have experienced something intense that has stopped them, isolated them, or locked their bodies. Many people try to pick up the thread again after a trauma and dance and move again. Where life is rough, something vulnerable and valuable sometimes comes to light. I want my work to essentially reveal vulnerability, pain, and imperfections for the viewer.

I often work with charcoal because of its directness, its rawness, and the traces it leaves on paper and my hands. The charcoal cannot be completely controlled; for me, it moves with the intensity of the moment. Sometimes I add colour with paint as an accent, as breath, as a counterforce to the black.