Ellen Meers

Ellen Meers lives and works in Brussels. Her work is characterised by a distinctive visual language in which symbols, patterns and memories converge. Building on a foundation in drawing, Meers has developed a practice that intertwines the intimate with the archetypal. She has swapped paper for ceramic tiles and reliefs, in which her marks take on a tangible, almost ritualistic form.

Engraving, painting, glazing, scratching – every gesture contributes to a process in which meaning is not fixed, but remains in constant flux. Her artistic language draws inspiration from personal anecdotes, childhood memories and shared stories, which are transformed in her work into pictograms with an elusive, almost supernatural charge. Tiles become compositions, individual images become sentences, patterns become rhythms. Just as hieroglyphs bridge the gap between image and language, Meers’ works create a space in which interpretation and intuition prevail. The individual becomes collective, the particular universal. And yet, in deciphering them, the viewer is gently thrown back upon themselves time and again.