* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Roos van der Vliet was born in 1985 in dordrecht, the Netherlands. She’s currently living in Arnhem. She earned a BFA from ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in 2009.
She is concerned with the human condition, particularly with how living in such a large and historied world affects our identities. She paints photorealist portraits of young women she identifies with in an effort to resolve these feelings of anonymity and alienation.
In the series of impressive, slightly disturbing hair portraits, women stare out at the viewer through thick, often tangled curtains of hair. Their eyes are clear and piercing but their mouths are universally covered by imaginative variations of hair shackles. In one image, interlaced strands of tangled hair entrap a woman’s mouth in a configuration that resembles a medieval torture device. In others, solid cloths of hair look like face-covering masks, leaving only small sections of the women’s faces exposed.
