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Ellis Holman Portrait .jpg

Photo by Xinix Films

ELLIS HOLMAN | BIOGRAPHY 

Ellis Holman (born 27 January 1997, Waalwijk (NL)) is the last of 5 children and grew up in a small town in the South of the Netherlands. Spending her childhood in a loving family, in a neighbourhood where you could, and still can, jump from backyard to backyard without having to ask her love for exploring her surroundings began. When she had to choose a high school, she chose a different school than her siblings, to stop being the "sister of.." and to figure out her own identity.

 

After high school she went to SintLucas Boxtel, a creative MBO school focused on concept development and creating, with a specialization in stage and product design. Here she found a reconnection with craftsmanship and love for materials that she has known all her life coming from a long line of carpenters. Her graduation internship at DRIFT showed her the impact of an object on a space and how design and art can merge.

 

She started her studies at The Willem de Kooning Academy in 2018 to explore material, craftsmanship, and space in the major product design. While she found her own signature in the product design department and questioned the function of her work, she developed the ‘Growing Cabinets’ project in which she shows the roots of a piece of furniture. With this project, she realised that she was not on her way to becoming a product designer but slowly turned into an artist who creates art installations. In this research, she understood the strength of telling a story with an object and combined her passion for film and photography with her installations to share a narrative. 

 

Now she is graduated she wants to keep exploring her surroundings and focus on her own studio with which she wants to create art installations that share her view on the world around us.

ELLIS HOLMAN | ARTIST BACKGROUND

Ellis Holman (born 27 January 1997, the Netherlands) is an artist that gets inspired by the landscapes around her and tells their narratives by translating them into art installations. She uses her passion for film and photography to analyze her surroundings and from there starts to research materials and shapes with an experimental and iterative process. 

 

Coming from a long line of carpenters she always had a special place for material and crafts. This is visible in her first known project ‘Growing Cabinets’, which tells the story about acknowledging the relationship between the function of the product and the material it is made of. Creating a better balance between these two and understanding the perception of the material and its origin.

 

This combination of nature, material research and craft are what thrives her, but for her graduation project she wanted to add an extra layer in which there is more space for the emotions of the viewer. Inspired by kinetic art, the escapism art movement and neuroeastetics she developed the project ‘The Narrative of Sunlight’.

 

‘The Narrative of Sunlight’ is a series of kinetic light installations created by Ellis Holman and reflect on her fascination for the behaviour of sunlight around us. The series consists out of three separate light installations that come from the same narrative. The goal of the work is to create a contemporary form of escapism inspired by the optical effects of sunlight. Creating a wondering moment of seeing something beautiful but also the curiosity of how it is created. Pieces that make you think but also let you return to a moment of timelessness and give you a reminder to take a deep breath. A work that gives the viewer an opportunity to escape.         

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