Bastiaan van Leeuwen

SAPARTISANÉ ART: “He who was born as an artist.”

Born in the rolling landscape of Stramproy and raised in the lands of red soil and culture: “Tanzania and Guinea-Bissau.” Grown up in Amsterdam, the city whose motto is “Heroic, Determined and Compassionate.”

I bring the combination of different cultures to life in my collages. The cheerfulness of village life in Stramproy. The interconnectedness of people and culture from Africa: “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” - “I am because we are”. And the diversity of the city of Amsterdam.”

From a young age I transformed family photos into collages. In Tanzania I learned from nuns how to shape dried banana leaves into images. In Amsterdam I studied visual arts, with collages as my graduation project.

For years now I have been making collages every day, inspired by, among other things, flora and fauna. My specialty is cutting out paper diamonds…