Margriet van Engelen Explores Perception and Interconnection Through Hen Panta and Ubuntu

Key facts

• Margriet van Engelen is a Dutch visual artist whose practice investigates change, perception, and invisible connections between people.
• Her current practice centers on Hen Panta, meaning "Everything is one," which she describes through the metaphor of a web of life or woven fabric.
• She selects materials in response to a theme and explores their possibilities playfully rather than beginning with a fixed visual solution.
• A lecture at a discussion center of the University of Amsterdam on creating a canon for the European Union prompted her investigation into how history is selected and interpreted.
• This led to the works Framework of History 1 and 2 and a broader inquiry into what she calls the "essence of seeing."
• She compares perception to a court hearing requiring multiple witnesses, and tested it by placing an art object against changing backgrounds, mirrors, light, and shadow.
• Her influences include Zaha Hadid, for imagination and for establishing a distinctive position in a male-dominated field, and Tadao Ando, for minimalist treatment of light and space.
• Ubuntu, her most important work, is built from triangular stainless steel mesh elements interwoven with rainbow-colored tape and arranged in a circle, inspired by the South African philosophy "I am because you are."