HANDIEDAN Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1981 -

Handiedan (SPRANG-CAPELLE, NL, 1981) - Amsterdam, Netherlands

The art of Dutch artist Handiedan involves a complex cut and paste mixture of digital and highly detailed sculptural hand cut collages, complimented by conscientiously collected antique ornamental frames.

Handiedan’s accomplished and refined collage technique allows her for an artistic journey through past, present and future. The result is an almost kaleidoscopical visual exploration whose discoveries are sometimes immediately visible and sometimes hidden in plain sight.


Deeply influenced by scientific and spiritual interests - from Quantum Physics, Cosmology and Numerology to Sacred Geometries, Metaphysics and Eastern Philosophies - her art embraces the various forms of vital energy endlessly permeating the universe and mirrors the eternal motion of life in its kaleidoscopic manifestations.



Protagonists of the works are the iconic pin-ups clearly inspired by the burlesque universe. The artist digitally composes their bodies by assembling anatomical parts of different pre-existing pin-up images from the 1920-1940s, transforming them into images reminiscent of the Neo-Classical and Victorian ages, the Parisian Belle Époque, up to the 1940's and Post-War sexy imagery.

With their joyfully sexual poses they celebrate the universal power of sensual love as one aspect of the energy of life. With luscious liveliness their forms bend in and out the background to personify Handiedan's investigation in femininity. They stand for the Lover and the Mother, embodying sexual freeing and tender love, strength and vulnerability.

At once mistresses and goddesses, these creatures are endowed with a symbolic power that can be traced down to the archetype of Mother Earth (or Mother Nature) shared by all ancient cultures. Nature perpetuates the circle of life as she nurtures the seeds that receives and gives them new life through stages of change, decay and renewal and according to her laws birth, life and death are just transitory moments of a constant vital flow of energy.


Handiedan is always inspired by the the Golden Ratio, also known as divine proportion, whose presence in all realms from quantum levels to the eternal motion of planets and galaxies is proof of a universal law connecting everything. The pin-ups inhabit a visual world filled with Fibonacci spirals, fractal patterns, planetary charts and the sacred geometric form of the Flower of Life. The bodies and their backdrops are connected through these lines and shapes that either scientifically or symbolically represent the universal harmony ruling nature and life.

The artist makes use of recurrent images that refer to this principle, like the skull commonly used in history of art as a strong visual reminder of the cycle of life and death. In many pieces the presence of a butterfly shape serves as living proof of the natural process of transformation and evolution into a magical even if short-lived creature of beauty.