artists
Claudia Terstappen
Originally from Arnsberg (Germany), where she was born in 1959, Terstappen studied German Literature and Philosophy at the Heinrich Heine University before continuing her studies in Sculpture and Photography at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art. Her creative concerns have led her to live and work in various places around the world—currently, she resides between Barcelona and Melbourne—, developing a career that naturally moves between cultures and landscapes.
Her work primarily unfolds through photography and ceramic sculpture, although it never adheres to a single discipline. Beyond the medium or technique, her work stems from an intimate experience with Nature, especially in remote environments. The photographs capture the immediacy of the lived and reflected landscape, while the ceramics offer a more abstract interpretation, as if they were cult objects. Both the photographs and ceramics share Claudia’s interest in transcendence.
One of the constants in her artistic thought is the reflection on the relationships between religion, science, and superstition. This thematic line takes shape through a perspective that combines intuition, research, and anthropological sensitivity. Her travels to countries such as Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Iceland, Japan, Indonesia, and southern Spain have allowed her to connect with ancestral traditions and forms of belief rooted in the land, exploring the persistence of myths and rituals in contemporary societies.
Far from any decorative rhetoric, her aesthetic is built from observation and awareness of the environment. With over thirty years of experience, Claudia Terstappen has exhibited her work in numerous international exhibitions (both in museums and galleries), has been recognised with various awards, and featured in multiple publications. Her work, with great formal and conceptual coherence, invites an open and profound reading of the human connection with Nature, Art, memory, the passage of time, life, and death, ultimately.
