Eva Gjaltema gives a glimpse into her most recent work: ’Sehnzucht’ and ‘Sehnzucht: The Remix’, where the series are based on the artist’s personal experience of becoming a mother, the contradictory nature of the event and the conflicting emotions it creates. Her work describes the awe at the incredible ’once in a lifetime’ beauty of motherhood mixed with feelings of daunting powerlessness and isolation. We live in a time where women feel increasingly a great deal of stress— both self-imposed and external — to juggle all life roles perfectly. Gjaltema’s work reflects on this phenomena in a series of collages composed of surprising, seemingly unrelated yet deeply connected elements.
Eva Gjaltema (*1979, Zwolle, currently living in Berlin) sees photography primarily as a medium for recording time, memories and transience. In her work she refers to universal themes like the family institution and the influence of history on the present. She switches between documentary projects and more personal autonomous projects, where the autobiographical is always her point of departure. Gjaltema has a Bachelor Degree in Photographic Design at the Royal Academy for the Visual Arts in The Hague, the Netherlands.
She was selected ‘Best of photography departments art academies Netherlands 2008’ by the Amsterdam Centre of Photography with her installation and book ‘wrang’. In 2010 she was nominated for the Dutch Doc Award for her exhibition ‚Famylje’ at the Noorderlicht Photofestival. She held a Stipendium to create the work ‘Knoalster’ in 2011, which was exhibited at the Kunsthal Rotterdam and Noorderlicht Gallery Groningen. More recently her work‚ Fernweh& Heimweh’ featured as ‘Editors Pick’ and ‘Conceptual Project’ at Lensculture and ‘Sehnzucht’ was nominated for ‘Fine Art Photography Award 2016’.
Website: evagjaltema.com
