Sophie Vanhomwegen

Sophie Vanhomwegen, born in Brussels in 1988, is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice revolves around digital image, video, sound, collage, painting, and animation. Fascinated since childhood by popular media, including cinema, photography, and advertising, she began questioning early on the power these representations hold over our collective perception.

Through experimentation, visual accidents, and an intuitive exploration of material, she seeks to understand the mechanisms that make certain images so captivating. She quickly grasped the ambivalent nature of these visuals: seductive yet often manipulative. This awareness fuelled a stance that is both critical and creative, leading her to develop her own visual language to reclaim these codes and interrogate their influence on our relationship with reality. Her productions intentionally blur the lines between representation and illusion. By playing with ambiguities, trompe-l'œil effects, and disconcerting textures, she poses a recurring question: can we still trust what we see? Each work acts as a fissure in our perception, revealing the invisible workings of the contemporary image.

After studying Media Arts at KASK in Ghent, she went on to complete a master's in Transmedia at LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, a program focused on hybrid art forms. There, she pursued both practical and theoretical research into how digital images are constructed, built to catch the eye, yes, but also to hold a kind of coiled tension that might jolt the viewer into paying attention. As part of this inquiry, she produced a series of video pieces that both document and drive the work forward.

Figuratively, her work offers a methodical deconstruction of visual stereotypes, particularly those that objectify the female body. Through collage and repurposing, she questions dominant representations and reveals their implications: body-shaming, the standardisation of bodies, and submission to inaccessible norms. In response, she proposes a recomposition of the gaze, rehabilitating a sensuality filtered through her own subjectivity. Surrealist humour and absurd or dissonant associations punctuate this critical approach.

Since 2021, her work has taken a significant formal turn: painting began to layer onto her digital prints, resulting in deliberately ambiguous hybridisations. These works, at the crossroads of the pictorial and the digital, question the classical hierarchy of media. This challenge to conventions finds a spatial extension in her most recent production: her images break free from their original format to occupy space in the form of paper sculptures. These three-dimensional installations embody a gentle revolt against normative frameworks, while continuing a coherent reflection on visual ambiguity and the reconditioning of the gaze.

'I was always drawn to the process of cutting out and rearranging found footage. This early fascination evolved into a strong command of editing techniques. For a long time, my practice remained entirely within the digital realm.

At a certain point, I felt a need for materiality. I shifted toward a more analog practice, focused on paper collage. My manual compositions are defined by surgical precision and graphic simplicity. They invite a constant visual ambiguity: is this a physical collage or a digital construction? This orchestrated uncertainty creates a perceptual tension, a continuous oscillation between tangible materiality and digital illusion.'

This dialogue between the digital and the analog became fundamental to my process. Since 2020, I started painting on my source material before also enlarging those pieces. More recently, I have begun painting directly onto these enlarged collage prints, initiating a constant back-and-forth between the two mediums. This interplay creates a visual illusion and a perturbed gaze, further unsettling the viewer's perception and questioning the very nature of looking.

Today my approach keeps shifting constantly. I may start with painting, then add collage techniques, only to digitise everything and print it out again. The process underlines my transdisciplinary approach and questions the very notion of authenticity in a work of art.

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