Guda Koster: Clothing as identity marker

With her installations, sculptures and photographs, Dutch artist Guda Koster transforms the human body and attaches a new identity to her characters or to herself, using clothing as the main visual art form, patterns and colours to create surreal stories.

It is the outfit that defines daily life, our social position, the interaction with others and how we see ourselves. Often exaggerated, with humorous twists, reality is distorted or, better said, cleverly organized into codes and meanings which we can unriddle by focusing on the setting or the fabrics usually sewed by the artist herself.

The illusion and contrast between what is visible and what is invisible is also something that Guda Koster likes to play with. The impossibility of seeing the face of the subjects, covered with small houses, geometric shapes or certain burdens of social or religious nature, erases the limits between man and context, raises the mystery and appetite to learn more, offering the work an universal value.