Bette Adriaanse was born in Amsterdam in 1984. She studied Image and Language at the Dutch Gerrit Rietveld Academy from 2004 until 2008, and went on to study for her Master in Creative Writing at Oxford University. She now works as an artist and a writer, often combining the two art-forms. Betteās literary work has appeared in magazines for literature, art and philosophy, in the UK and the Netherlands, and she regularly exhibits her visual work. She currently divides her time between London and Amsterdam. AdriaanseĀ writes stories, fables and poems, and she makes drawings, installations and video-work. Her works balances on the border of literature and visual art, often blending the two together. Even in the works where text and image do not physically come together, a connection is visible. Her writing has a very visual character, while her images often have a time line, or a narrative frame. Her thematics circle around contradictions such as cruelty and naivety, growth and decay, reality and delirium, and explore the distance and connections between them. Her images and stories often have qualities that are reminiscent of dreams and nightmares: linear time gets disrupted, realities collide, subjects are enlarged and stripped from background and context.Ā While Adriaanse’sĀ work always has a direct, intricate meaning in the dreamlike atmosphere it takes place in, it also carries a symbolic charge that refers to the world around the viewer/reader. Bold and lyrical, herĀ work was shown at La Porte Peinte in the Be:e and quotidiƦn shows.
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