The sculpture depicts one of these sleepers: a figure holding its hands to the face like a pillow, with legs positioned as if stepping forward. At the front of the artwork stands a mattress that slowly inflates and deflates. Bags of refined sugar hang from the figure, connected to the mattress by cords. As the mattress deflates, the weight of the sugar pulls it inward, wrapping it suffocatingly around the figure.

The work offers a critical reflection on Western humanity — a category the artist explicitly includes himself in. Over 2,500 years ago, Heraclitus wrote: “My fellow humans do not know what they do while awake, just as sleepers do not know what they do while asleep. Sleepers are workers, collaborators in the happenings of the world.” Yet we seem to have learned little since. Hunger for money and power, self-interest, and complacency continue to drive humankind. As long as we are not directly affected, we carry on — or even benefit from it.

The symbolic sugar packages refer to “fast sugars”: they provide a brief surge of energy, followed by a crash. A fitting metaphor for the cycle in which we continually lull ourselves back to sleep. We dream of progress, yet keep treading in place.

With this work, the artist expresses solidarity with awake citizens and activists who, despite everything, take small but meaningful steps forward and manage to awaken others. During the sculptural transformation process, the artist searched for colors that would visually merge the figure and the mattress into a single whole in which transformation can occur. The human form is also fragmented — a deliberate choice that connects to psychiatrist Esther van Fenema’s opinion piece “Dangers of the Fragmented Human” (De Volkskrant).

(1) Heraclitus: Everything Flows. Paul Claes, Athenaeum, Polak & Van Gennep, Amsterdam, 2014.

(2) https://www.encyclo.nl/begrip/geraffineerd

Materials: polyurethane foam, wood, metal, acrylic resin, fiberglass fabric, marble powder, air mattress, fabric, sugar, cords.

Dimensions: 120x90x200cm