Fascinated by the surreal beauty of the harsh natural landscape she utilises this as her canvas. Anthropologically curious, her ideas emerge directly from the local mythology that originates in this otherworldly environment.
Using naïve and childlike colour palettes her photographs draw on the language of the surreal showing familiar objects out of context (a llama wearing balloons, top hats flying through the desert and a pair of naked legs entwined around a cactus).
Her humorous and unsettling juxtaposition of these everyday objects with the sparse, unforgiving landscape echo the aesthetic of surrealists such as Rene Magritte. Hooft Graafland utilizes the medium of photography, associated with the representation of truth, to represent the fantastic and the irrational.
Born in the Netherlands in 1973, Graafland is based in both Amsterdam and New York. She has studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Hague, Bazalel Academy, Jerusalem and Parsons School of Design, New York and has travelled to Iceland, Israel, Canada and the United States for her work. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions all over Europe and as part of group shows at the Metropolitan Museum. New York, and the Musee D'Orsay, Paris amongst others.
Harvest Time, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, 2006
