Sterre Pomper
Visual Art ISterre Pomper is an artist and researcher born and based in Amsterdam. Through her multidisciplinary work and commitment to the act of collecting, she builds an archive of queer identities that is not necessarily rooted in historical fact, but emerges through ephemeral moments, found images and their reinterpretation. Pomper considers how archives shape our understanding of history, identity and collective memory, and how fiction can give form to narratives that have been overlooked or left undocumented. Working across various traditional craft techniques such as quilting, ceramics, printing in connection with installation and writing, she uses different techniques to reflect on processes of remembering, preserving and reconstructing. These speculative histories are populated by imaginary characters whose lives exist somewhere between historical possibility, fiction and memory.
Presenting a site-specific installation that brings together patchworked textiles, ceramic tiles, prints and architectural elements to reconstruct a fictional place and its history. Drawing on found images and fabricated archival materials, the work centres on an iconic queer figure situated somewhere between a cowboy and a sailor. At Felix Meritis, the installation takes the form of a fragmented streetscape, evoking the nightlife of sailors in Amsterdam and Lisbon across different moments in time. Moving between spatial context, archival material and subjective memory, the installation considers how these elements combine to shape our understanding of places and histories that may no longer exist.