The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Spring Visual Grant to Hedwig Brouckaert for her project “Peel - America”.

Hedwig Brouckaert works with mass media imagery to create introspective and tactile works, which range from drawings and sculptures to site-specific installations. ‘Peel - America’ is a series of paper collage on ceramic and marble tiles, working with imagery of skin from mass media. Living in NYC, she is interested in the complex images created by dirt and grime on the white-tiled subway tunnels - repulsive and quite beautiful at the same time - as an image of the passing of time and the layered society that is the city. The tiles she uses are meant as the architectural skin of the spaces we inhabit or pass through, the lobbies and underground tunnels where millions of people pass through daily. From mainstream magazines like Vogue, with its over-produced images of whiteness that mask the inequalities in our society, she cuts out models' skin and layers it over and over with glue and acrylic paint to create a bas relief on tiles. The artist then sands, cuts, and carves with sharp tools to reveal the deeper layers beneath. The skins peel, uncovering strange patterns and melting boundaries.

Brouckaert creates tension between the highly representational, commercial, and banal starting point, and the illegible and condensed result of her layering process. As a teenager, she fantasized about painting all billboards black, and hijacking commercial images. We’re constantly programmed by advertising into believing that we need something outside of us to change how we feel inside of us. Working with mass media imagery, Brouckaert’s work refers to its distorted and harmful messages of desire and identity, but totally transforms the original narrative to reflect on the vanity of life in the hyper-consumer world of today.

Hedwig Brouckaert grew up in Flanders, Belgium, and has been living in NYC since 2010. She received an MFA from the University of California, Davis after completing a Masters in sculpture at the Sint-Lukas Hogeschool in Brussels, and a Postgraduate studies at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Belgium. Brouckaert received numerous grants from the Flemish Government in Belgium, and fellowships of the NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, the Rockefeller Foundation – Bellagio (IT), Liguria Study Center Bogliasco (IT), Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris, Hafnarborg Museum of Iceland, Yaddo (NY), and FLACC (BE). Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions internationally, including at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (BE), Städtische Galerie Villa Zanders (DE), Bangkok Art and Culture Center (TH), VOLTA NY with Jan Dhaese Gallery, Kentler International Drawing Space (NY), Transmitter (NY), Project:ARTspace (NY), ChaShaMa (NY), Pallazo Vendramin Costa (Venice IT), and Gallery-EL (BE). Brouckaert’s work has been discussed in the Brooklyn Rail, the New York Times, Blackbook, ArtSpiel, Uncovered, ArtCouch, and (H)art.

Hedwig will present this series 'Peel (America)’ in an exhibition to open in NYC in the spring of 2023.

Please visit Hedwig’s Instagram, and website for more information.