Sieglinde Van Damme
- futility in three acts -
Sieglinde Van Damme is a multi-disciplinary artist based in California, although she used to be an economist with European roots. Focused on abstraction as an open, undefined potential to new interpretations, her work reflects on the deep layers of our individual past histories and the complex dynamics behind big life choices. Her message:"re-imagine what else is possible.”™
Sieglinde holds both an MS Economics from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and a Master in Fine Arts from San Jose State University. As an award-winning artist, she participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions spanning the US, Europe, Russia, India, and Japan.
Sieglinde’s art and writings have been published in various catalogs and media publications both in the US and in Europe. Her art is included in private and corporate collections around the globe, including Sotheby’s International Realty in France - Monaco.
Award highlights include the Lorenzo il Magnifico Award for video art in Italy; the Belle Foundation Grant for artistic merit as well as the Leigh Weimers Artist Award in Silicon Valley, CA; a Grant from the San Jose Office of Cultural Affairs' Creative Industries Incentive Fund through the Center for Cultural Innovation; both a 2021 & 2022 Certificate of Artistic Merit from the jury at the Luxembourg Art Prize; and a 2024 Opulent Art Global Art Award.
About the Artist:
While currently focused on painting and mixed media, my broader interdisciplinary practice includes photography and video installation. Across all mediums, my work explores identity, adaptation, memory, and the ways we continually negotiate who we are as we move through life.
Having immigrated from Belgium to California in 1998, I became interested in how identity is continually negotiated between personal history and social context. I realized that adapting to a new situation with intention asks us to consider what stays, what can be let go of, and what new choices become available in response to changing circumstances.
The three videos presented in this exhibition approach these questions from different perspectives. Through image, sound, and movement, they explore what happens when life changes course. What remains? What evolves? And how do we stay connected to who we are while allowing new possibilities to emerge?
Although these works were created during a period when my practice expanded beyond painting into video and photography, they reveal many of the ideas that continue to shape my work today. Whether through video, photographic traces, or abstraction, I am interested in creating spaces where multiple interpretations - and new possibilities - can coexist and where uncertainty opens the door to curiosity.
At its core, this exhibition reflects a belief that life itself is a creative act. That identity is not fixed. That meaning is not singular. And that we often have far more freedom, possibility, and authorship in shaping our own lives than we realize.
The thread connecting it all remains the same: “re-imagine what else is possible”™
- futility in three acts -
What happens after something breaks?
Structured in three movements - destruction, reconstruction, and re-imagination - this work examines the human impulse to create meaning from irreversible change. Empty wine bottles are shattered, gathered, reorganized, and painstakingly reassembled into new forms. Yet despite every effort, the original object can never fully return.
The work reflects on transformation itself. Whether imposed from the outside or chosen from within, there are moments in all our lives when change carries a point of no return. We may attempt to repair what was lost or restore what once felt familiar. Instead, something else emerges: not restoration, but a new relationship with what remains.
More than a collection of broken glass, the work asks what kind of meaning can be created from fragments. It suggests that value does not arise from returning to what was, but from engaging with what is and deciding what comes next.
Viewed today, the piece feels especially relevant. We are living through a time of rapid change, uncertainty, and constant disruption. Old assumptions are being challenged, familiar structures are shifting, and many people find themselves navigating circumstances they never anticipated. In that context, - futility in three acts - becomes a reflection on our capacity to discover new possibilities and choose what to build from here.
- futility in three acts –
video with sound, total playtime: 22min 53sec
visuals by Sieglinde Van Damme
music/sound by Cole Ingraham & Sieglinde Van Damme
