Menno Hiele, Mette Sterre and Sara Vrugt

What do the artists Menno Hiele, Mette Sterre and Sara Vrugt have in common?
All three are aspiring, exceptional artists of the same generation, whose work focusses on the relationship between nature and man. And all three are winners of the 2024 Emerging Sculptor Award launched by Sculpture Network to recognise the significant contribution of artists in their respective fields.

In 2024, for the second edition of the Emerging Sculptor Award accepted nominations to select three exceptional emerging artists between the ages of 25 and 40. This time Sculpture Network’s Curatorial Board led by artist Hartmut Stielow, art historian Laure Debouttiere and art advisor Natalia Bergmann selected Menno Hiele, Mette Sterre and Sara Vrugt. The Emerging Sculptor Award includes i.a. a free three-year membership of Sculpture Network and the opportunity to be a speaker at regular Online Club sessions organised by Sculpture Network. Sara Vrugt presented her works during the Online Club event “Louis le Roy and Sara Vrugt – Re:nature” on 18 December 2024, while Menno Hiele and Mette Sterre used the online event on 27 January 2025 to inform the audience in detail about their objectives and working methods. We would like to pay tribute to these three artists by taking a detailed and comprehensive look at their work. The artists are presented in alphabetical order of surname. The order does not imply any evaluation or ranking of the quality of their work.

Menno Hiele – nature and technology in harmony

Menno Hiele (b. 1988 in Utrecht, resident in Zeist, the Netherlands) describes himself as “natural artist” and creative designer.  He usually uses wood, often in combination with living plants, imitates or is inspired by wood, trees, barks and their surroundings. Hiele’s fascination with trees and the adoption of unusual perspectives in his art stems from his previous work as an arborist.

Hiele’s art studio is located in a forest but also in close proximity to a motorway – a working environment that reflects a duality often observed in his artwork. Hiele is interested in natural processes such as the growth of trees, but also in man-made technology, which explains why these two phenomena meet and interact in a symbiotic way in his works. To combine artificial art with living plants in the context of an exhibition, Hiele uses hydroponics, a sophisticated technique for growing plants in a closed system using a nutrient solution tailored to the needs of the specific plants. This ensures optimum plant growth even in in-door environments with artificial light and low humidity. Thanks to this technique, the plants integrated into the artwork can grow, creating an ever-changing installation. Hiele calls these sculptural works “Hydroponic Sculptures”.

Hiele’s Tibia hollandicus hybridus is a very impressive hydroponic sculpture that has been already exhibited in various contexts. Hiele sees this installation as an artificial portrait of the cycle of nature as found outside of the exhibition space. For the installation itself, 21 different wild plants are “grown” in a nutrient solution that flows through a system of hoses and tubes, evoking a resemblance to the human bloodstream and so projecting a very explicit vibrancy.  Perforations in the material allow you to hear as well as see the fluid passing through the tubing, thus, transforming this work of art into a multi-sensory installation that can be experienced visually, olfactorily and acoustically at the same time.

Apart from plants in sophisticated technological systems, Hiele takes his inspiration from wood as a material. The artist uses hydroponics to connect wooden constructions that grow in height, takes inspiration from the structure of wood to create sculptures of man-made materials and impressive kinetic art installations made of wooden planks, such as the kinetic installation Terugkruising (2017). When you approach this work of art, tiny sensors bring it to life. Once activated, thin, 2,6m long wooden planks fan out to gradually reveal a painted pine branch, symbolising the dynamic cycle of nature. In fact, even without this reference the kinetic installation is impressive in its sheer size and aesthetic presence.

Through his art, Hiele also explores the different causes of forest decline and tree mortality, using tint and structure of trees affected by disease or fungus to create new, artificial sculptures made from synthetic materials. The interplay of nature and technology – in constant dialogue with man – is always at the forefront of Hiele’s work.

Mette Sterre – Beyond the human body

In the work of Mette Sterre (b. 1983 in Delft, resident in Amsterdam, the Netherlands), the human body is at the centre of design and appearance, be it the artist’s own human body or one of the artificial, strikingly excessive all-over bodysuits. Sterre’s work defies the usual genre definitions, being at once performance, fashion design, moving sculpture, digital installation, physical computing and, to some extent, even soft robotics.

Sterre enjoys transcending genre boundaries, thus, creating her own world and inviting the viewer to enter it. Animation and interaction are the tools that make Sterre’s structures accessible and almost physically tangible.

The artist’s feminist perspective is reflected in the design of her sculptural body masks and in the titles of her artworks. A very prominent example is the sculptural body mask with moving fingers and satin used in G-string Theory – Ponting Sisters Blame Game, which is animated by 200 servomotors installed throughout the body suit. The body mask is kept in the tone of Sterre’s skin, which creates the impression of a bodily transformation process and adds a very personal dimension. Sterre’s body masks are either worn by her or her assistants during performances or shown as stand-alone objects in the context of an exhibition. When worn by a person, Sterre’s sculptural body masks influence the way the human body moves, creating new movements and body images.

Sterre’s creative thinking revolves around how the boundaries of the human body can be expanded, transformed and transcended. Real people are, therefore, often directly involved in the work itself or are the basis for its design and form. This explains why the artistic alienation and transformation of the human body, without completely losing its recognition factor, is a recurring theme in Sterre’s visionary and technically and technologically sophisticated works.

Sterre’s gesamtkunstwerk Seapussy Power Galore - Abcession (if you don't know, you don't grow) consists of a futuristically designed and surreal-looking figure with a human body made of silicone, animated by soft robotics, and placed in an artistic scenery, also animated. The colours are very strong but bright, no black or earth colours were used. This creates an artificiality, although the viewer can still recognise some of the underlying natural forms (a human body, vegetation, a cliff) – again, a transformation of the reality we know. Like most of Sterre’s works, Seapussy Power Galore - Abcession (if you don't know, you don't grow) was the result of an intuitive process with the work expanding over time and ultimately taking a year to complete.

Time is also a central theme in Sterre’s work, including the question of how time can be experienced in space. In this sense, the landscape with its almost otherworldly, surreal vision of the future, also owes much to Sterre’s interest in time, space and their influence on people.

Sara Vrugt – Community Art for Different Perspectives

Sara Vrugt (b. 1983 in Amsterdam, resident in The Hague, the Netherlands) creates embroidered, fabric spaces to present and reflect on social issues.  She creates collaborative imaginative biotopes of the world we perceive every day in all its beauty and challenge.

By inviting people from different backgrounds to co-create her artworks and by maintaining an on-going dialogue with her own environment, Vrugt succeeds in creating works that offer new perspectives on what are actually common phenomena. By collaborating with others, she creates not only something new but also works of art in which a diversity of our socio-cultural views, ideas and desires are rooted.

The encounter with others is an essential part of Vrugt’s work process, from the initial ideas, through the involvement of the community in the technical execution, to the presentation of the finished artwork. At all these stages, participants and observers are invited to connect and interact not only with the work of art itself, but also with all those involved in the creative process. Vrugt’s community art project 100.000 bomen en een bos van draad (100,000 Trees and a Threaded Forest), for example, was co-created by 1,278 people from different backgrounds. Together, they created a walk-in spiral-shaped fabric construction featuring an embroidered forest with trees, leaves and animals. Alongside the work itself, Vrugt initiated the planting of 100,000 trees through crowd-funding activities and efforts. The artist describes this type of activism aimed at contributing to a better world as „a form of craftivism“.

Vrugt’s fabric environment Look at you 4 is similar in form, but has a different focus. This installation is also a walk-in spiral, but access to it is restricted – visitors can only enter on their own, one at a time. Inside the spiral, they see the artist, who alternately approaches and recedes. Here, the encounter takes place in a different context and is in some ways much more intense. Look at you 5 is by its form also a walk-in fabric spiral, but here the visitors can meet each other, see each other’s reactions through the windows and react to the embroidered silhouettes of female figures expressing different emotions. The transition from embroidered human silhouettes to abstracted representations of the human retina creates the impression on several levels that the viewer can be seen. Look at you 4 and Look at you 5 are two parts of the series Look at you in which Vrugt wants to approach the way people perceive or form opinions about each another, and how they interact with each other.

Vrugt always creates her artworks in the context of others: either through collaboration, exchange of ideas or involvement in the working process, and so this method always results in different perspectives and ultimately in a completely new angle on the subjects she approaches.

Emerging Sculptors – An Award with a Future

All three winners of 2024 Emerging Sculptor Award see man and nature as the starting point for form design and creative content. In most cases, the finished work can only unfold its potential if the viewer is prepared to make a substantial emotional investment by confronting and responding to the work and by acknowledging one’s own emotions. Menno Hiele, Mette Sterre and Sara Vrugt, undoubtedly, make a vital contribution to their respective artistic fields and have the potential to further develop their artistic creativity, break new ground, and set an example for future generations of artists.

Congratulations to the award winners!

Written by Iris Haist in German