IMATELIER: What about your choice of materials? You have a treasury of different offcuts, threads, and a sewing machine here. I also notice that your new works clearly depart from flat surfaces. Is there a special significance to texture and materiality in your practice?  

NATHALIE: Materials play a very important role. Material and working with it directly with the hands. I am most interested in relief in the broadest sense. It's not a sculpture, but it's not completely flat either. The back and forth of depth and surface is something I always want to work on. Even when I paint with oil on canvas, it's as if I'm building a relief. With oil painting you can create a mysterious depth because the light shines through between the layers. I prefer to combine different materials and then try to somehow merge everything into a unity, which gives me great pleasure. I also try to do the same when I work in installations. Then it's about designing a space in such a way that you can immerse yourself in a world.

I often start works simply out of love for a material, for example because I really like a certain fabric. It's more of a sensual approach. Then the material “dictates” where the journey takes me. But sometimes I also start with an idea, a concept and think about how I can best implement it. Sometimes it's a mix of both, a back and forth. There is no recipe and no rule.

IMATELIER: Nathalie, what about your work process—do you have any routines or rituals you follow in your studio? 

NATHALIE: I don't have strict rituals in the studio, as my life with my family is already very organized. In the studio, I enjoy not having any rules or fixed routines. I do actually have two small rituals: I first get a good strong espresso in the screen printing workshop next to my studio and exchange a few words with the other people there. Then I take care of the plants. Then I work for several hours at a time, concentrating on several works. I usually need music to get me in a certain mood. 

IMATELIER: Do you have any role models in the arts, or artists you’re learning from? Or maybe you could share some [female] artists' names that we should know about?

NATHALIE: I have a few role models in art, artists who have asserted themselves with their personalities and their work despite all adversity, for example Artemisia Gentileschi, Meret Oppenheim, Emma Kunz, Hilma Af Klint, Niki de Saint Phalle, Yoko Ono, Faith Ringgold, there are so many....But at the moment I'm reading a book by Miriam Cahn called “Das Zornige Schreiben” (Angry Writing) which is blowing my mind, making me laugh and marvel, making me angry but also strengthening me. I love her work, especially the charcoal drawings she chugs onto the walls. And her texts. I am fascinated by a different aspect of each of these artists. With Artemisia Gentileschi, I admire the combination of ingenious technique with the deliberate selection of motifs (mostly strong women). With Emma Kunz, the delicacy and precision of the drawings combined with her visionary world of ideas. With Niki de Saint Phalle I love the shooting pictures, Faith Ringgold's work is very close to me because of the textiles. But the most important thing about all these women was their uncompromising approach to their work, and that's what I admire most. But for my work I learn most from Old Netherlandish painting, an art historical period between Gothic and Renaissance painting, and also from indigenous art, which I was able to research as an art ethnologist. Another source of learning is fashion. I am constantly moving between the surface and the three-dimensional to space and the body.