About Isa van Lier

Isa van Lier’s work exudes an all-encompassing sense of softness and playfulness, immersing the viewer in a world of wonder and childlike curiosity. During her studies, she followed an exchange program at Tokyo Zokei University in Japan in 2019. This experience had a profound impact on her work, particularly through her introduction to Japanese kawaii culture, which revolves around cuteness, and Shinto animism, which believes in the animation of natural phenomena and objects. She incorporates these elements into her art by adding faces to objects, thereby animating them and bringing them to life. ARTZUID is showing Kettingreactie, a sculpture that Van Lier describes as a gateway to another world. She created the sculpture for the BUILD! project for the Lage Weide business park in Utrecht. This industrial environment is a place where products pass through many anonymous hands, moving robot arms and conveyor belts. Van Lier felt the need to create something round, colourful, cheerful and human, in contrast to that often square, grey and automated industrial world. The handmade spheres, made by Van Lier and her friends, together form a circle, a metaphor for the many links of an infinitely moving cycle.