Installation work with ceramics, drawings and soundscape

Winner of the St. Joost Penning 2024

How do you give meaning to your childhood when it’s erased for the most part and little to nothing remains? What can you hold onto? How can you bring repressed memories and long lost objects back to life? Most importantly, how do you reclaim authority over your belongings, your memories, your past?

In this installation Ista offers a glimpse inside of his rather turbulent youth. Where he spent his developmental years of early childhood in and out of foster care and the children’s home. While documenting his memories of this time, he explores the significance object such as toys can have. While most kids hold great value to their toys and belongings, growing up in foster care really puts them on a pedestal. Having to share your things with reckless little kids, being dragged around from place to place, often causing them to break or get lost. All this while being passed around between adults trying out parenthood, as if you are a toy yourself.

                                                      

Uit het oog verloren
colored pencil on paper
29,7 x 42 cm
                     

Karaoke cd-speler
Glazed ceramics
53 x 22 x 44 cm

Uit het oog verloren
colored pencil on paper
29,7 x 42 cm

Now Show x St. Joost School of Art & Design, Breda
I will heal you
June, 2024
Photo Luuk van Raamsdonk