About.

Anni Mertens is a Luxembourgian artist who has been working on her master's degree at the LUCA School of Arts, Ghent, Ceramics and Glass since 2020.. She grew up in Luxembourg and pursued her studies later on at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten HKU in Utrecht, Netherlands where she graduated in Fine Arts in July 2019.

She uses ceramics, wood, plaster, concrete and a healthy dose of humour in her sculpture installations. Nothing is what it seems. She playfully bends, coats and twists materials in such a way that it is hard to distinguish what’s solid and what’s porous, what’s delicate and what’s not. The skeuomorphic objects that make up the installations find common ground in their relationship with the body. These objects situate themselves somewhere between extensions and analogies of the body, playing visual and spatial games as they form a trail, seeking poetic coherence between shape, colour and textures bending and flexing concrete and ceramics while exploring the limits of their material capacities. The inspiration of the play-drive or the play impulse, explains why there are always playful elements coming back in her installations. The intuition plays an important role during her process, so she follows the material and the material follows back. The assemblage of sculptures refer to our journeys which are filled with the unexpected, questioning how we grow throughout these journeys and do we ever outgrow the urge to play?