Stef Van Looveren

In her film 1000 Girls, A Place We Go, Sietske Van Aerde leads viewers through a series of playful transformations. Inspired by the nymphs of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who are constantly shifting shape due to the cruelties inflicted upon them by the gods, the film follows several individuals searching for ways to exist in a world that can often feel heavy. Van Aerde films her own surroundings, capturing friends, artists, and other passers-by as they speak about themselves. We witness a variety of internal portraits unfolding.

Adagio displays a variety of inclusive, non-binary bodies that enter a dialogue with each other in a continuous slowness, and the same can be said of the recorded images. Adagio does not recite a ‘truth’ but aims to be a question mark, searching for a spectrum of possibilities and plausible answers. This is a piece that searches for authenticity in a world of limits and oppression and breaks through structures that society systematically places on people and bodies.