Meet: Floor Martens

Floor's work is strikingly often about people, animals and the relationship between them. Her fascination for this started a number of years ago, during her time at the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design, when she found a dead rabbit on the doorstep of her parental home. She decided to use it for her work. "That was the starting point of my exploration. I started thinking about material that is close to you: what happens to it when you start using it in your art? When is it no longer an animal, but a material?"

In her work she incorporates transformation processes in living beings, but she also often looks for contrast. Woman/man, man/animal or life and death. She often uses her own experiences, such as her diary, and personal themes such as love, grief and loss. "My work is honest, personal and recognisable - it can feel like an embrace. At least that is what I hope to convey," says Floor.

Having spent the first part of her life in Reuver, she has been living in Maastricht for some time now. Soon after her graduation in 2019 (Fine Arts), she was invited to two group exhibitions. Shortly after, her work was awarded the Limburg Visual Arts Stipendium, an initiative of the province. As a result, she completed a residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy in late 2020, and exhibited at The Studio at the Bonnefantenmuseum in 2021.

She has a studio in her home in Maastricht, but she actually sees it more as a test space for an exhibition, and as storage for her materials. Her real studio is outside. Because there is still a world to be discovered there. "More ideas come to me than I have time or money for. There is still so much I want to do! I would especially like to work with old crafts; I find it interesting to look for the delay. For example, people seem to forget that the meat in the supermarket was once slaughtered. There is too much distance to such processes nowadays, few people stop to think about how things come about. That is why I love analogue photography; I find the chemical process of the creation of the photograph beautiful.

Should she win the Parkstad Limburg Prize, she knows where the prize will go. "Hopefully I can invest it in making more books. I already have a few to my name, and hope that there are many more to come. It has a clear beginning and end, ideal for recording a process."

You can visit the exhibition of the Parkstad Limburg Prize nominees from 30 October.