Preta Wolzak

Preta Wolzak is a Dutch artist, born in 1970 in Amsterdam, the city where she currently lives and works.
She studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy.

She is a multi-talented artist who mainly creates works by combining hand embroidery with leather and different fabric appliques, tools which appear fascinating to her in order to express emotions and be critical within her work. The artist developed awareness of the limitations one faces to be free.

People of energetic demeanor, willing to change things, fascinate her and stimulate the quality of her work. In the series of portraits “People with the yellow ear”, the artist combines mixed ethnicities. They all have one yellow ear and a vertical yellow line in their face: they are one family where empathy is the new politics. The Inuit people are often a source of inspiration.

In the series of “Arctic Charade” Preta depicts her outrage at the way people today treat our globe. This translates into often rather chaotic compositions. The viewer is taken into a magnificent landscape decor, a work full of glamour and rich materials with acrobats using nature as a backdrop for their excellence in appearance and daring performance. But there is also a dark side to the story: the acrobats stand for the foolish behavior of mankind, ruining its environment, threatening even the last untouched areas of our planet: the North and South pole.