From the series 'Borders of Nothingness'
In 'Borders of Nothingness', Margaret Lansink dwells in the transitional ambiguity of her adult daughter’s decision to suspend contact with her, photographing landscapes and nude women whose disappearing presence raises the same haunting question: is this the moment you were gone?
As time passed, Lansink and her daughter reconnected to investigate whether their break could be mended. Lansink then began to revisit and reinterpret Borders of Nothingness in a physical practice that mirrored their emotional efforts of healing. Working from the Japanese practice of repairing ceramics with gold leaf (kintsugi), she combines her images, severs them, and mends their breaks with gold leaf to put hope into the possibility of a bond that is stronger and more beautiful because it had once been broken.
*Kintsugi (金継ぎ: 'golden joint'), also known as Kintsukuroi (金繕い: 'golden repair'), is the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold or silver lacquer. In Japanese philosophy, the traces of breakage and repair contribute to the beauty of an object.
Margaret Lansink uses photography to bridge the personal and universal. Who we are is often determined by our social environment and (family) history. How we build our self-esteem, often determines how we look to the outside world and how we react to the other. In her work, Lansink explores these relationships. The way she photographs is purely intuitive; her images present an open and honest reflection of her own inner emotions at a certain time, space and interaction. Shot as self-portraits in the broadest sense of the word.
With this intuitive way of photography, she invites the spectator to embark on a journey through their own intricate web of memories, emotions, expectations, fears and desires. Margaret uses analogue cameras to capture the different atmospheres of her inner emotions. Giving the images the freedom to act as an overflow from reality to dream and vice versa. More and more she experiments with her images, with paint, goldleaf, charcoal as well as with liquid light in the darkroom.