Studio Uiterwaal Kroes

Acrylic paint on photographs

Fernando, 2025
100 × 80 cm edition 1/1

Studio Uiterwaal Kroes developed from a shared interest in the politics of representation and the portrait as an instrument of control. The practice began with photography but gradually shifted into a hybrid form in which the photographic image is physically manipulated with paint, blurring the boundary between photography, painting, and performance.

The works operate within the domain of portraiture but refuse its traditional function of identification and fixation. By physically overpainting their own likenesses, they interrupt the photographic contract of recognisability. The portrait is no longer a representation of a stable subject but instead reveals transformation itself: the moment between who you were and who you are becoming.

Central concepts include liminality, destabilisation, and the performativity of identity. Identity does not appear as essence but as a role that can be rewritten. The right to that rewriting is a question of power. In a visual culture in which faces are continuously captured and classified, the works claim the right to illegibility.

Methodologically, the duo works with direct paint interventions on photographic prints. Reflective pigments make the image dependent on light and movement; not all interventions are visible at the same time. The work manifests in relation to the viewer and remains in a state of transformation.

The practice positions itself within contemporary discourses on surveillance, facial recognition, and biopolitics, and references a tradition of photographic manipulation (Gerhard Richter, Thomas Ruff), while emphasising the body as a political battleground.

The artist duo Studio Uiterwaal Kroes consists of Aron Kroes and Merette Uiterwaal.