The artist and model talks to AnOther about her intriguing new book of artworks, composed from discarded ephemera
“Look up!” poets, writers, artists and designers have insisted repeatedly over the ages, championing soft-focus skies, architectural flourishes and the stirring of seasons over all that could be found at ground-level. Saskia de Brauw, however, advocates looking down to the ground; and in so doing she has found a wealth of treasures, as her new publication The Accidental Fold demonstrates.
The book is a catalogue of sorts – a collection of found objects which the Dutch artist and model has discovered, picked up and immortalised while out and about on her travels over the past ten years. Given the number of campaigns, covers and fashion shows she has starred in over the years, it's no small number. “They’re things that I’ve found on the street, worthless objects like pieces of paper, hairs, cards, paper airplanes, dried up pieces of fruit, or even an old shoe. Anything that strikes me as beautiful,” she tells AnOther softly. “One of my favourites is a yellow balloon that I found on the beach in the Netherlands, in the book it’s a black and white image. It looks like a sea animal, and I’m really fond of that object. It has decayed in this exceptional way, and that’s what charmed me.”
Participating in the two fields simultaneously, de Brauw finds that her work in fashion often overflows into her art. "In The Accidental Fold, for example, there are colourful hairs that come from a shoot, or threads from the Chanel fitting room floor. I’ve been to places that otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to go to, and seen things I wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t have the job.”
Much more than simply an eclectic agglomeration of isolated objects, the pieces are all intrinsically interlinked by the human experience which created them. “In a way they are part of a travel journey,” she continues. “I’m always interested in the moment when lives somehow accidentally cross. I think sometimes those accidental meetings can be small miracles, they can really change one’s perspective on that moment, and on life.” While at one point, de Brauw carried a portable scanner with her in her suitcase everywhere that she went, in order to ensure that she could record her findings in real time, now she simply gathers them up and takes them home. “In the beginning I didn’t attach any sentimental significance to them, but now when I find something I write down where I found it, and the date. Some I will remember more or less, but memories stay for a little while and then they fade away. Everyone has ways of trying to find a way to memorise our past. There’s something very poetic about that."
The physical rendition of The Accidental Fold was brought to fruition in collaboration with Erik Haberfeld, a designer de Brauw met while studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and is consequently immaculate in its execution. “Erik has a very precise idea of how he wants things to be. He’s quite obsessed with detail; how the threads should be, and how does the spine of the book look on a bookshelf. He has an extreme passion for books, and I really love that."
Saskia de Brauw's The Accidental Fold is available now.
