Sigefride Bruna Hautman
Sigefride Bruna Hautman (°1955) is an arresting figure in the Flemish art scene in the early eighties with the emergence of a new form of figurative art. Her focus lay on sculpture, freestanding sculptures and reliefs, and poetic reflections on paper, often in English and illustrated with speech balloons, eye-catching headings and captions.
Her work is hermetic and difficult to pin down, and yet it communicates well. Its content bursting with spiritual imagery, most evident in her written work, but also appearing in her expressive works of art. Her oeuvre unites word, image and painting, without the intent of abolishing the boundaries dividing them: each of the forms co-exists with the other, giving rise to a poetic unity. Her sculptures and images give the impression of being thoughts which have solidified into clay or plaster, with poetry broken up into fragments, like wisps of a dream, blossoming from the subconscious. Figuratively speaking, her work remains only partially legible and draws on recurring symbolic images: leaping figures, masks, urns, eyes, plants and waves of water. All is sculpted, cast, drawn or engraved. Associations with cosmology (earth, fire, water, air) are conjured up, and become an invitation to psychoanalysis; yet with every rational revelation new questions are raised imbuing these manifestations with a mythic character, inundated with the cryptic and unexplained.