Collier met hart van textiel en papier maché c. 1990

This 'Collier met hart van textiel en papier maché' is a mixed media piece by Petra Hartman, a Dutch artist born in 1960. It’s kind of hard to pin down exactly when it was made, but what’s so compelling about it is the combination of textures, from the soft silk scarf to the more rugged heart, made of textile and papier-mâché. It's like a clash, or maybe a conversation, between different worlds. There’s a real physicality to the heart. You can almost feel the rough edges of the paper and textile, the way the colours blend and bleed into each other. And then there's this delicate scarf, so light it almost floats. In the centre of the heart, there's this pool of gold and brown, like looking into liquid amber. It's so tactile, you just want to reach out and touch it. Hartman’s work reminds me of artists like Eva Hesse, who also played with texture and form. Ultimately, art is a continuous dialogue, a back-and-forth between ideas and materials. Pieces like this embrace ambiguity, leaving room for our own feelings and interpretations.