Tine Colen

Works

About

Tine Colen

Izumi

2020

I learned a recipe for salt-crusted salmon from my mother-in-law. For celebrations, a large piece of salmon would be bought and prepared whole. Once all the flavors had seeped in and the edible parts had been carefully sliced away with a filleting knife, a beautiful piece of skin remained. It seemed a shame to throw it away, so I looked up how to tan it. A week later, when Fiona Balke visited and saw the simple cedarwood shoes I had made using the tanned salmon skin, she mentioned she could easily supply me with more fish skins. Her father had founded the first Japanese restaurant in Antwerp, and to this day, they still serve delicious fish dishes. We decided to experiment together, tanning the skins with black walnut, oak bark, oil and egg, and gallnut, each method resulting in different colors and textures. Our group grew, and Helena Schepens introduced us to using sepia, another restaurant kitchen byproduct, as a casting mold for silver.

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Works

About

After her training in the medium of painting, Tine Colen (1985) felt the need not to simply represent or imitate the world, but to be in the midst of things. Gradually, the following elements became characteristic of her work: The blurring of boundaries between art and functional objects by creating items that carry meaning and can sometimes be used / working with natural materials in a cyclical process, often defined by their temporary, seasonal nature, as well as human-made materials considered waste / seeking specific knowledge about plant usage through the study of ethnobotany and anthropology / a slow and labor-intensive making process, rooted in collective creation / generating value through the way objects are used, gifted, and passed on / using public space as a workshop, where the physical work sparks conversation, encounters, and change.

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