Fia Cielen
Fia Cielen studied at the Royal Academy for the Fine Arts and the HISK, both of which are in Ghent. Her work has been displayed in various exhibitions in Belgium and abroad. Cielen is represented by the Annette de Keyser Gallery in Antwerp.
Fia Cielen makes sculptures, drawings, videos and installations that come together to form a wondrous universe: one in which such opposites as life and death, art and nature, dark and light cease to exist. Cielen’s works and how she presents them are reminiscent of eighteenth-century display cabinets full of curiosities. They summon up, at one and the same time, a mixture of horror and wonder.
This dark fairy-tale world is populated by mysterious creatures who appear to be in a state of metamorphosis: a half-way stage between man and animal. Cielen is particularly interested in the mystery of transformation and the interim stages this can involve. It is not only her animal-like creatures who are in a continual stage of transition – Cielen shows that the same can be said of our entire reality.