My work begins with an attraction to materials, often using discarded or reclaimed waste that I transform into light objects, sound installations, and paper-glass pieces. I work closely with fermentation, growth, and aging. These are living processes I can set in motion, but never fully control. Through them, I explore how queer and marginalized bodies navigate boundaries they did not choose, such as location, time, and law. Even when I set the limits for growth, the material always adapts and stretches in unexpected ways. Its marks, scars, and signs of aging are physical proof of the constant dialogue between freedom and limitation.
Kombucha SCOBYs and fermentation are central partners in my practice. The way a SCOBY adapts within its container is a deeply personal topic for me. A culture takes in, processes, and metabolizes its environment before forming a physical body. This mirrors my own neurodivergent experience of taking in world sensory input in order to show up as a person. My role is to intentionally step back, observe, and learn through doing. Instead of forcing a material into a rigid idea, I listen carefully and let the work emerge from the material itself.
This open approach to discovery shapes everything I make. For instance, I collect lost drawings made by anonymous hands and place them behind glass. Through an exercise in empathy, I imagine where the drawing came from, the emotional state of the person who drew it, and what my own imagination can add to their world on paper. These pieces create a playful, intimate space for intuitive making outside of research demands. Across both sides of my practice, I pay close attention to the quiet and invisible details: growth, vulnerability, and the tension between what holds us and what we contain.
COMING UP:
10.09 - 17.10 Resonance of the past - Base Alpha gallery Antwerp BE
04.10 - 16.11 space-collection - coolcity2000 Leuven BE
27.10 - wonder festival - design regio kortijk
eyes wide shut...sheep lamps
a series of lamps made out of a material that i have been researching the past few years starting at het bos residency, this material is a byproduct of the brewing process of kombucha, some people call it a scoby, yet it is a pellicle that grows ontop of a scoby. this material exists out of thightly bound cellulose wich with the right technique of drying, stretching, treating and oiling makes a leather like product that give this beautifull sheen when i shine lught trough it, exposing its growth history and story.
I shall rise, and so will you / gut feelings
translates the unseen metabolism of living matter into an immersive acoustic environment. Custom computer vision software and hydrophones monitor fermenting kombucha vessels in real time, capturing every rising bubble and mapping its velocity, size, and trajectory to dynamic audio notes. Enclosed within translucent organza drapery and warm, focused lighting, the installation invites visitors to slow down, lie down on the provided beds, and attune their own bodily rhythms to the living pulse of the micro-organisms.
le petit prinxe
BOOX.SPACE, Haarlem
"All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it." – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
In Le Petit Prinxe, I show a visual ode to childhood's naive, unfiltered simpleness. Using reverse glass painting, a technique where marks are made blindly on the back of the surface, each piece emerges as a surprise: a conversation between the maker, the artist and its inner child, where memories materialize in delicate lines and simple bright forms.
These works are preservations: fragile feelings encased behind glass. Like Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince protecting his rose, i guard vanishing states of being, through a visual interplay of whats said and what still needs to be done.
I ask: How do we hold what slips away? When did we stop seeing stars as miracles?
residencys:
2025 Antwerp queer arts festival - De studio BE
2024 Bos academie - het bos BE
Solo shows:
2025 le petit prinxe - Boox.space Haarlem NL
2025 I shall rise and so will you - A night called quest - Destudio BE
group shows:
2026 wonder festival kortrijk - designregio kortrijk BE
2026 design fair - Nieuwe instituut NL
2026 resonance of the past - Base Alpha gallery BE
2026 coolcity3000 - Liege BE
2026 At its core - Biuro Buru at studio jaskólka Warsaw PLN
2026 biopony "beats of love" - extracity Antwerp BE
2026 Limburgse Biennale - Odda park NL
2026 PFA(RT)S " a landscape of exposure" - MHKA museum BE
2026 nature in dialogue - kunstfabriek NL
2026 days like this - albert van abbe huis NL
2025 the plot thickens - dingendienietverkopen BE
2025 XX in it together dead darlings - W139 NL
2025 to snail away - outhouse gallery UK
2025 kunstlijn Haarlem NL
2025 PAS foundation x duval BE
2025 the hub - arttelex BE
2025 Museumnacht - het bos BE
2025 Antwerp artweekend - off program BE
2024 closing - kieken centrale BE
2024 the first minutes - t-space BE
2024 the last minutes - t-space BE
2024 10 years het bos - antwerp art weekend BE
2023 geplande werken, royal academy of arts BE
2023 verkopen u dingen - dingendienietverkopen BE
projects:
2024 founded T-SPACE
2024 Window washers
2026 aesop artist campaign
schoolstraat 27, 2060 Antwerpen Belgium & jan nieuwenhuijzenstraat 25b, 2013zb Haarlem, the Netherlands
+32456420513
deltavmelle@gmail.com
https://ratelherbals.nl/
