Using natural latex in experimental ways Silke creates slowly decaying sculptures, mimicking the fragility of life itself. Her work is part of the science-fiction subgenre and artistic movement ‘speculative evolution’, which blends evolutionary science and biology with fantasy to create new plants and animals from speculative futures. Her sculptures can be seen as these hypothetical species, and through this practice she playfully envisions a future beyond our timeline. To Silke, the future is equally scary as it is exciting, and she translates this duality into her sculptures that are both creepy and beautiful, dystopian and utopian at the same time.
With her sculptures she hopes to reflect the fragility of ecosystems, while offering alternative ideas for the future. Her aim is not to educate on climate change, since she thinks we are way past the need for that, but instead offer composure in the fantasy of our demise. Inspired by rainforest plants, marine invertebrates, mould formations, as well as mythologies, paracosms and science fiction, her work has an otherworldly aesthetic.
She is currently based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
