Two years of the Covid pandemic have made us accustomed to keeping our distance. Hugs, handshakes and the typically Dutch greeting with three kisses had to give way to bumping fists, elbows, feet or even just nodding from one and a half metres away. Faces were hidden behind masks.

The profound lack of physical contact between people inspired Joris Roosen (b. Tilburg, Netherlands, 1997, lives in Breda, Netherlands) to create the performance Encounter, Reunion. As a result of the distance that people had to maintain for so long, Roosen felt himself becoming increasingly alienated, not only from others but also from himself, a ‘non-person’ in his own words. Based on his desire to overcome this loneliness and fear, he developed his performance, which symbolises a renewed encounter, a reunion, a reappraisal of the physical encounter that offers comfort.

Roosen graduated from St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda two years ago. He studied visual art, but his work shows an affinity with fashion, gender and materiality. The artist is interested in the areas of overlap. Starting with conceptual steps (handiwork, waste matter), he began to combine materials and the body, creating masks, living sculptures and wearable objects.

Roosen also made the body masks for his Brief Encounters '22 performance himself. Using new and waste materials, he crafted extremely sophisticated face and body masks. The lace is hardened, embroidered into shape and then further sculpted at high temperature. Resembling insects made of delicate black lace, their shapes reminiscent of stag beetles, they are attached to the performers’ heads, arms and spines.

From different directions, four creatures slowly move closer and closer to each other. They feel each other out, revolve around each other, carefully, attentively. They progress on all fours, making animal-like movements. In a choreography of powerful touches, they push each other until they are standing upright. Slowly, they rid each other of the masks that are hiding their bodies. The creatures become people. A transition from non-human to human, liberated from their shells, freed from their fear, and intimately connected.