Isabelle Siem

‘Don’t Forget About Home’ is a series that explores our connection to the world around us and within us. It speaks of knowing your roots, staying close to home, and listening to the quiet echo of where you come from. But it also reflects the courage of letting go. Leaving behind what’s familiar in search of something deeper: a sense of home within yourself, recognition in strangers, belonging in unfamiliar places.

In April 2025, I travelled to Kintamani and Amed, two regions in Indonesia that remain raw, untouched, and deeply rooted in their own rhythm. Places that resist exposure, and quietly guard their authenticity. There, I collected sand from different coastlines, stones shaped by heat and time, and textures carved by wind, water, and silence.

Through ‘Don’t Forget About Home’, I reconnected with my Indonesian roots. I explored what it means to carry a home inside you, and how, sometimes, letting go is the only way to return to what truly belongs to you.

The series ‘Inner Landscapes’ is the beginning of a sculptural journey, rooted in intuition, form, and the interplay between inner emotion and outer expression. The first piece, created in Barcelona, marked the origin of this wooden sculpture series and was the first sculpture I ever created. Shaped spontaneously and carved from natural Spanish wood, it explores depth not only in its physical contours but also in its emotional reach.

This initial sculpture (200 x 120 x 30 cm) set the tone for what would follow: a dialogue between the artist and the world, a practice of intuitive making that invites both creator and viewer into a space of quiet introspection. The work embodies themes of empowerment and connection. It is a personal topography through which one is encouraged to slow down, look inward, and trust the unspoken.

‘Serenity’ (150 x 110 x 13 cm) later emerged as the second piece in the series, a blue-toned evolution of the same language, carrying movement and reflection into new emotional terrain. This sculpture is a tribute to the elemental force of water, symbolizing fluidity, adaptability, and the profound depths of the human psyche. This choice of material and color imbues the piece with a unique sense of tranquility and depth, mirroring the serene yet powerful nature of water.

‘Losing the Way While Walking’ was created after Isabelle’s journey through Asia in 2024, the works trace an emotional and geographical map of that experience. From the mist-covered mountains of Ha Giang in Vietnam, to the quiet rituals of Tokyo, and the raw, elemental nature of Bali, each sculpture holds a fragment of place, memory, and mood.

As a Dutch artist with Chinese-Indonesian roots, the journey was more than a search for inspiration. It was a way of stepping away from the familiar to find recognition in another part of her heritage. In these places, she discovered echoes of her own identity reflected back to her in unexpected ways.

Emerging from sketches made during the trip, the works are not just visual recollections, but translations of still moments: the silence of a forest, the pattern of rain, the texture of an unfamiliar city. The sketchbook became a vessel for impressions, and the sculptures give them new, tactile life.

‘Losing the Way While Walking’ embraces the beauty of getting lost, of wandering without a fixed purpose, and allowing the landscape to shape not just the route, but the inner terrain.

‘Lost in Translation’ is a two-piece sculptural work created in Barcelona, inspired by the nuances of human communication and the visual structure of the Latin alphabet. Language is both a tool and a framework, we use it to express ourselves, but it also shapes how we perceive the world. This series explores the tension between expression and interpretation, and the space where meaning can slip, shift, or dissolve.

The abstract forms in each sculpture are rooted in letterforms from the Latin alphabet. Familiar symbols of writing, speaking, and understanding. By deconstructing and reassembling these symbols, the work invites viewers to search for recognition: a curve that suggests a vowel, a line that echoes a consonant. Yet just as language differs across cultures, so too does interpretation. What one viewer sees may feel entirely foreign to another. The original forms are stretched, merged, and obscured, reflecting how meaning can be altered or lost as it moves between people, cultures, and contexts.

‘Lost in Translation’ speaks to the challenges of making oneself understood, and the delicate interplay between identity, expression, and reception. It is a meditation on the limits of language, and the potential of art to carry what words sometimes cannot.

‘The Four Elements’ is a sculptural series inspired by the ancient theory of Empedocles, who believed that all matter is composed of four fundamental elements: fire, water, earth, and air. Each sculpture in this collection embodies one of these forces, not as literal representations, but as abstract interpretations of their energy, character, and tension.

Through form, texture, and material, the series invites viewers into a dialogue with the natural world. Fire is expressed through dynamic movement and intensity; water through fluid lines and reflective surfaces; earth through grounded mass and tactile structure; and air through open space and lightness. Together, they explore the delicate balance between these opposing yet interdependent elements, a balance that also exists within ourselves.

‘The Four Elements’ offers a moment of stillness and contemplation. It asks us to consider how these ancient forces continue to shape not only the physical world but also our emotional and spiritual landscapes.