TIMNOTSIMON VISUAL ART
portfolio
Studio: Zeeburgerdijk 265, 1095AC Amsterdam
Timnotsimon@gmail.com
+31 6 38134487
BFA Minerva Academy Groningen
Fine Art 2008 - 2012
Certified Emergency Response
My work emerges from a fascination with impermanence, queer identity, and the
beauty of paradox.
Through sculptural environments, installations, and scenography, I create temporary ecosystems
that seem to grow through a space. My works attach themselves to constructions, light, sound,
bodies, and movement, transforming familiar locations into living microcosms. I am interested in the
space where opposites meet: strength and vulnerability, beauty and decay, safety and discomfort,
the natural and the artificial.
My queer identity forms an important point of departure within my practice. Not necessarily as a
subject, but as a way of looking at the world. Being queer is teaching me that many of the
categories we use to understand ourselves and each other are far less fixed than we often believe.
It is teaching me to find beauty in difference, to remain curious about the unknown, and to make
space for contradiction.
I am drawn to things that are often dismissed as too much, too artificial, too childish, too fake, or
simply in bad taste. Camp, kitsch, irony, pop culture, plastic-looking surfaces, awkwardness,
excess, and the slightly wrong all play an important role in how I approach my work. Not as a joke,
but because these qualities allow sincerity and absurdity to exist at the same time.
A balloon is never a neutral object. It immediately brings up associations with birthdays,
celebration, decoration, childhood, temporary joy, and sometimes cheapness. By using this familiar
and almost banal material to create romantic, organic worlds, an absurd tension appears. To make
something that resembles nature out of party supplies is both ridiculous and strangely sincere. It
reflects our desire to shape reality, to decorate it, control it, and believe that everything around us
can be made into something else.
Balloons currently form one of the main materials through which I build these environments. At first
glance they appear simple, almost mundane. It is precisely this quality that interests me. I use
fragile, air-filled material to create works that can become monumental, excessive, and almost
alive. They breathe, occupy space, and possess a fragile sense of presence. The moment a work is
completed and reaches its full bloom, it simultaneously begins to disappear. The material slowly
changes shape, deflates, and eventually fades away.
I experience this as an honest imitation of life itself.
A balloon sculpture can demand attention and occupy vast amounts of space, while remaining
fragile and ultimately consisting of nothing more than stored air. Within this tension between
presence and vulnerability, I recognise much of what fascinates me about life, queer existence, and
the communities in which my work often takes shape.
Much of my work is created within clubs, performances, theatres, and queer events. I see these
spaces as temporary microcosms where people can reinvent themselves, connect with one
another, and explore alternative ways of being together. Light, sound, performance, and the
movement of bodies are not secondary to the work; they are part of how the installation becomes
alive.
Ultimately, I am not interested in providing answers. Instead, I seek to create conditions in which
people feel free to explore, play, assign their own meaning, and make a space their own. For me, a
work is only truly complete once someone else enters it and connects it to their own experience.
Perhaps everything ultimately comes back to being alive.
I try to build worlds that feel fully alive, if only for a brief moment. Worlds that are aware of their own
impermanence and invite us to be present in the here and now, before the moment disappears
once again.
KVK: 80901689
VAT: NL003503298B