SHOE BUTTERFLY COLLECTION

This arrangement is reminiscent of classic butterfly and insect collections, where species are arranged by shape and type. A nostalgic nod to the past, full of historical charm.

DATES:

December 10, 2024 - June 30, 2025

ABOUT: SHOE BUTTERFLY COLLECTION

LIFE SPORTS: A MONUMENT OF SHOES AND HUMANS
This collection of pinned-up shoes breathes the history of individual people. Each pair tells a story: the wear pattern reveals the traces of a life lived. But who were the wearers? How did they live?

In this context, man becomes as anonymous as a butterfly in a display case. Here a human life is reduced to a static arrangement based on shape, color, size and type. Everyone is equidistant from each other. A certain kind of person wears a certain type of shoe, and so different kinds of shoes find their place in separate bins. The whole acts as a monument to people - lived or alive.

SHOES AND HUMANS: A DRAWBACK
Shoes carry a person, and a person wears shoes. But what does a shoe actually tell us? Two functions can be discerned about shoes.

The first is a necessary one: protection from the elements and hard surfaces. These shoes are chosen for their solidity, as an extension of the body, almost like a prosthesis. They are used intensively, sometimes repaired, until they run out and "die.

The second function is luxury: the shoes as an expression of identity and fashion. These are often vain shoes, designed to be seen, but worn only briefly. They soon disappear into the closet, a silent witness to personal style and consumption.

FROM SHOES TO FLINDER
The necessary shoe lives a full working life until it finally "dies. But in this collection he is given a new existence: he is prepared, ordered and pinned down. Like an emerged butterfly, it persists, a silent witness to the life it supported.

Thus these shoes, once full of movement and life, are a silent but powerful reminder of the traces of humanity.

ABOUT INGE KOENEN
Inge Koenen (1965, Breda) graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts, Tilburg (1995), (studied from February to May '95, Facultad Bellas Artes, Granada).

She cuts, paints, carpets, glues, stamps, gouges, pours, kneads, embroiders, draws, sews, sews, saws, screws, photographs, cuts, tears and collects.

Her work mainly includes photographs, installations and objects, carefully made, with attention and patience.

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