INTERVIEW WITH SIDNEY WAERTS
1. What fuels your creative process right now, and how has your background in street art shaped your current work?
My work isn’t just something I have to do — it’s driven by a deep need for inner growth. Each piece is a reflection of spiritual experiences, moments of clarity, and transformation. Creating is a healing process where generational themes are reshaped into something meaningful.
Over the years, I’ve uncovered deeper layers within myself and now fully trust my self-taught path — both as a person and an artist.
Street art was my foundation. It connected me with people I needed to meet and helped me reconnect with myself. While the city was once my canvas, nature has now become the space where my new visual language takes root.
2. How do you explore themes of identity and transformation through your visual language?
Exploration comes naturally to me — it’s instinctive, not something I plan or control. Inspiration arrives unexpectedly, almost as if it moves through me, while I simply observe.
My creativity acts like an inner tool that activates, often the moment I wake up. That in-between state is when ideas flow in, and I capture them right away in my blackbook before they take shape on canvas.
3. Can you share a project or artwork that represented a key transition in your artistic path?
'Earth', part of the FALL-series, is such an example that came to me one morning right after waking up. The image was so clear, I sketched it instantly in my blackbook. In the studio, I painted it without thinking—just flowing. It came together almost effortlessly, in a light, intuitive state.
Within two days, it was done. The process opened a door to a new way of working: letting go of photo references and embracing a more expressive, suggestive style. Flow over precision. That shift now runs through all my recent work.
4. In what ways does your environment—urban, personal, or spiritual—affect your practice?
Everything around and within me influences my practice. When the elements align — enough sleep, a clear mind, the right temperature and lighting in the studio, solitude (I'm truly a soloist), no packed schedule, my daughter content, and all materials at hand — then I can fully show up for the work.
I do my best to create that balance, because it's in that space that I access my best self creatively. If even one or two of those factors are off, I feel the difference. It becomes harder to drop into the flow.
5. What kind of global or cross-cultural project would you create if anything were possible?
Big question ;)
Project Concept: Roots & Return — Reconnecting with Indonesia
As a third-generation Indo, I feel a growing urge to tell a new, collective story — one shaped by younger generations of Dutch-Indonesians who often navigate life between two worlds.
Roots & Return is a multidisciplinary collaboration between emerging artists with Indonesian heritage in the Netherlands. Together, we are creating a traveling exhibition that returns to Indonesia — both symbolically and physically — to build a new connection from the “other side.”
Through visual art, installation, photography, text, performance, and digital media, we explore what it means to be Indo today: rooted in the past, shaped by the present.
The exhibition will tour various locations in Indonesia, inviting dialogue with local communities and artists. The aim is a meaningful exchange — one that creates space for recognition, reflection, and future perspectives.
At its core, Roots & Return is about reclaiming identity and heritage on a monumental scale — through the voices of a new generation.
Alight 230×130cm Asian ink on cotton scroll 2025
Rain gold, 140×100cm acrylic & aerosol on linen 2025
Scavenge, 70×45cm Asian ink on cotton fixed on wooden panel
