Mette Sterre (b. Delft, Netherlands, 1983, lives in Amsterdam) works on the boundary between theatre and live art, making sculptural body masks that completely cover the wearer. These masks are handmade from organic and artificial materials such as ceramics or rubber and are unpleasant to wear. They are heavy, hot, hard to see through and to move in. Sterreexperiments with robotics and uses prostheses that function as extensions of the body. She often sews body parts together. This results in hybrid creatures that can look grotesque or horrific. They are somewhere between animate figures and inanimate objects, ageless and neither male nor female.

With her work, Sterre investigates what changing the body means for the perception of the other and herself. Spectators have to relate to an unknown image of a human. They are encouraged to reflect upon the stigmatisation of ‘the other’ and the social construction of identity. The wearer of Sterre’s costumes, often herself, is forced to adopt a different way of moving and relating to the spectators. This creates space to think about what a human being can be and how to expand the boundaries of what humans are.
At the same time, by so thoroughly distorting the familiar human figure and restricting its freedom of movement, she criticises the anthropocentric idea that humans are at the top of the ladder of life on Earth.

For Brief Encounters, Sterre developed a performance around, on and in the pond, that exaggerates the contrast between the hysterical consumer society and the notion of being in harmony with nature, through karaoke, dance, scenery, performance and music. In the peaceful surroundings of De Oude Warande, Sterre created various tableaux vivants based around the idolatry of objects collected via deadstock stores and auction websites. Sterre pokes fun at the way in which these supposedly desirable objects determine identity, power and status in our society and how people become lost in their own surreal fiction.