Amrith de Zoete

I use factory materials and techniques such as stainless steel, industrial plastics, pneumatics, and motors, keeping them connected to their original environments. By using these materials, I state that the medium itself is the message, often referencing industrial production facilities.

These apparently soul-less but yet lively devices/machines as seen in the factories, are built for speed and inhuman precision, are responsible for our pristine products which we consume. I want to show this bleak, alienated and yet fearsome history of all that surrounds us as it is part of us and defines us in our modern life.

Where in daily life can I find, objects, behaviors and movements to arrange an assembly like a chapter of a factory. Forming a narrative which aims to evoke a tangible sense of hyperobjects, ungraspable systems like, climate change and the bio-industry. I try to research these systems through working with found objects like speed feeders, linear drives from medical machinery, rowing skiff and ceramic prosthetic teeth. By adding time and a self destructive character by animating these objects through industrial engineering methods. Slowly deteriorating itself or a figure stuck in a rowing machine. Duplicating my body so it becomes a product without any history and individuality, raising the question how to define a human? Trying to make the viewer feel a kinship with what is seen, a kind of feeling of responsibility, a feeling of neglect towards the system they are supporting.

I aim to create work that speaks to the audience without taking an overt stance, which allows for viewers to reflect on their own relationship to our collective human endeavors.