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  1. Sanne Vaassen (NL 1991). ‘How a grain of sand from the desert can fall on my cheek in the
    form of a raindrop by the evaporation of water in a distant land.’

    The showdown between internal control and external forces is the starting point and central focus of Sanne Vaassen’s work. She examines and attempts to capture the different shapes and properties that a
    movement can take. For Vaassen, a movement is a transition or transformation within a certain
    duration. She uses several movements, such as types of water current, a tree’s transformation
    from summer to winter, or the change of the moles on her skin. The fusion of fact and fiction,
    formed by chance and the artist’s control, is a reflexive pattern in her work. She plays with the
    reality in which we live, and the established symbols and traditions that we apply.

  3. The invisible made visible. For Sanne Vaassen that means she has to invent every time a precise method that matches the unorthodoxy of her concepts. Whether she copies her own birthmarks to one other by means of a tattoo or she collected snails to eat holes through 'The book of all anthems'. The music scores on every page got peep-through holes to the scores on the other pages: the performance of this new score would produce a random unity out of this mash-up. The work investigates constitutions that define identity and culture by putting this to the test. The methodology, preliminary to- and during the art production, embodies a strong performative quality. As a researcher Vaassen creates a complexity that questions a wide variety of biases, addressed by the versatile and layered oeuvre, as the artist she embraces her audience with a generous and poetical vocabulary and engages the dialogue in an intimate and personal way. 'Thinking' and 'feeling' are trusted partners in the perception of Sanne Vaassen's strong statements. The jury was deeply impressed by the sharp and personal observations of the human condition, the authenticity of the ideas and the powerful yet sensitive imagination.

    From the jury report of the Parkstad Limburg Award 2016, text: Paul Devens