Catalogue Distance to Zero

Erzsébet Baerveldt’s work is not limit to making videos, as she also does photographs, paintings, sculptures and performances. Baerveldt took her revised forename from the seventeenth-century Hungarian countess, Erzsébet Báthory, about whom it is rumoured that she was a vampire. Both women have the same date of birth and initials. Apart from the countess, Baerveldt is also fascinated by other historic females who stir our imagination, like Maria Magdalena, Lucretia Borghia, Mona Lisa and Ophelia.

Baerveldt’s work emphasises the centuries old field of tension between nature and the human spirit. For her, history, religion and mythology form an endless source of narratives that deserve renewed examination. In depicting epic narratives, Baerveldt focuses on two extremes of the ‘condition humaine’, namely, hunger for power and mortality. However much power or knowledge a person gathers, no-one can escape suffering or solve the riddle of life and death.