After her elaborate travels through Israel, America, Iceland and Bolivia, Scarlett Hooft Graafland (NL, 1973) recently lived for a few months in Xiamen, she was inspired by the typical architecture, the mountain landscapes, the local population in the Fujian province. Being led by an almost anthropological curiosity and her well developed artistic sensitivity, she decisively positions people or props in the landscape or city surroundings.

Because of the prominent role of the human figure in her compositions, Hooft Graafland finds her work to be more like sculpture than photography. Also, the process of staging the setting becomes part of the concept, since this site specific work needs the necessary preparation. The careful choreography of the human figure in its surroundings also renders the work a performance-like quality.

Another project ‘Good Fortune’, is made in close collaboration with a traditional porcelain factory in Dehua. By combining porcelain and firework, two typical Chinese inventions, she had unbaked vases blown up. After its baking- and glazing process the force of explosion is materialized in the snow white, vulnerable porcelain. Presenting it as a field of vases, Hooft Graafland explores the meaning of the Chinese character ‘field’, it being part of the sign ‘courage’ (daring to cross the field) and that of ‘man’ and ‘happiness’ (cultivating the field to fill the stomach).