ASHA SWILLENS

Asha Swillens (1994) is a digital artist/image maker and photographer. Her work is to a large extent influenced by her fashion study in The Hague and Antwerp, enabling her to develop her own artistic signature. She mainly used mixed media and designed garments by making fashion collages. Since 2020 her focus is on photography rather than fashion. Photography allowed her to push the boundaries of her former way of constructing ideas based on the shapes of garments and lead her to focus on the aesthetics of an image instead.

Swillens' extensive research of 17th-century paintings sparked a fascination with their use of lights and shadows alongside the combination of mostly black and white clothing on a dark background. Those paintings combine a heavy contrast with ‘ton-sur-ton’ tones to use these influences a specific feel. Work that feels like seeing a memory from a long time ago, whilst being modern and new - elements and atmosphere she adopted herself. Consequently, Swillens' work questions the border of reality and fiction as all her images are a digital collage - a non-existing composition of real elements.