Graduated in 1988 from the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam in sculpture and drawing.
Since then, I have been working as a visual artist and am active in museum education and chair of cultural advisory committees.

As a sculptor, I establish a connection between the Netherlands and Indonesia with the aim of expressing the universal psychological and spiritual experience of a diaspora. The sculptures are powerful female figures that refer to my Indonesian foremother and the creative source of new generations.

During the colonial period, Dutch men married Indonesian women. After the horrors of war, these families ended up in a cold polder country where people of colour were an exception. Born in the Netherlands, I have mixed Indonesian and Dutch roots. In my work, I use myself as a model or starting point to make a connection between the present and the past and between the Netherlands and the world: a connection in time and space. The aim is to question and accentuate the position of women of colour and Asian descent in the West.

My sculptures are not made from a single block of wood or tree stump, but are composed of vertical layers of industrial wood-based panels and reused wood. The reason for this is that the material is contemporary; its use places me and the sculptures firmly in the present, while at the same time the composite layering embodies my artistic individuality.

Stillness and abstraction form the core of the physical and emotional expression of feminine sculpture. With the visual language of the sculptures, I try to create a world of spiritual awareness and universal connectedness. In order to create that visual language with a suitable posture, I first carry out a research phase in which I photograph myself and make drawings. During the sculpting process of chiselling, carving and sanding, I delve deeper into the posture and expression of the figure. The working process is a form of meditation in which I seek to approach a world of abstraction, contemplation and spiritual awareness.

The sculptures are made of composite and pressed wood-based panels. By gluing the layers together, a pattern emerges in the sculptures, which accentuates the rounded feminine forms in a surprising way. Processing the sheet material also gives the sculpture extra wood grain and pattern, as each layer has a different wood colour and composition. In the working process, I explore the tactile character and uniqueness of the materials. My signature is a refined finish with attention to detail.

The sculptures are female figures without faces. This creates space for interpretation by the viewer. In the Asian art tradition, emptiness is deliberately used to provide space to enter the artwork with one's own thoughts. In the stillness and abstraction of my sculptures, I explore the posture of the figure in a process of selection and careful observation, in order to arrive at a physical expression that introduces the sculpture to a deeper, experienced emotional expression. The physical expression and emotion that sculptures generate in their use of materials, posture and figuration form the guiding principle in my work.

Western inspiration comes from Ernst Barlach, who also gave his sculptures layered meaning and a tranquil abstraction that rises above the individual. Trained in Rotterdam, I was inspired by Hendrik Chabot's expressionism, as evident in his robust sculptures with a keen eye for the impermanence of existence. Charlotte van Pallandt inspires me because she studied the human body in depth and sought the inner self that passes beyond visual reality. This also takes me back to Indonesia, where the feminine element is seen as the creative element of creation: the source of new generations. I feel a connection with the refined, graceful sculpture of Bali and the abstract, spiritual depth of the ancestral images of Nias and Tanimbar.