Mette Sterre

Mette Sterre is a visual artist who uses sculpture, performance, film and installations to explore the limits of the body. At the heart of her practice are sculptural body masks that transform the body and allow for new forms of movement, perception and awareness. By distorting human contours and creating hybrid creatures, she explores what it means to be human in a world where the boundaries between the biological, technological and fictional become increasingly blurred. Her immersive installations bring organic and artificial lifeforms together in speculative environments that invite a sensory and physical experience.

Sterre studied at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam and obtained her master’s degree at Central Saint Martins in London. She was a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2019–2021) and her work has been exhibited internationally at events and institutions including Manifesta, Glasgow International, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, Kunstverein Hamburg, the Watermill Center in New York, Performissima CWB in Paris and MMCA Changdong in Seoul. Her work is now on view at the 18th edition of the Lyon Biennale and she is currently a resident at ISCP in New York.

Part of The Space Between Breaths

Mette Sterre, How to Catch an Octopus in a Broken Heart, 2021. Installation of brown tubes and performance. Courtesy of the artist. Performed by Peter Cripps Clarks. Photo: Pauline Assathiany

About How to Catch an Octopus in a Broken Heart, 2021

In How To Catch an Octopus in a Broken Heart (2021), Mette Sterre explores how breathing connects the body with its surroundings. The title refers both to a Japanese pot used to catch octopuses and to broken heart syndrome, in which intense emotions can cause physical changes in the heart. Air, blown through long hoses by industrial fans, brings the installation to life and causes it to constantly change shape. The breathing sculpture depicts the body as porous and mutable, influenced by external forces. Inspired by the forms of deep-sea creatures and themes such as vulnerability, grief and intimacy, Sterre explores how bodies relate to one another and to their surroundings. Breathing thus becomes a metaphor for interdependence: we do not exist in isolation, but always in relation to our surroundings and to one another.

Other works by Mette Sterre in The Space Between Breaths:

To breathe properly is to live properly, 2023
Video
04:04 min
Courtesy of the artist

Website: https://www.mettesterre.com/ Instagram: @mettesterre