Exploring Female Identity Through Contemporary Art: An Interview with Simone Boon

OTOMYS: You grew up in Holland and have experienced such a diversity of cultures by spending time in Borneo, Venezuela, Belgium, Malaysia, Austria and Hong Kong. How has living between different countries with such different cultures helped frame your work?

 

SIMONE BOON: I was born in British Borneo, where my parents lived as expatriates. A kind Chinese amah took care of me, speaking to me in Chinese. My father used to say I could understand her. We returned to the Netherlands when I was still very young, but soon after, we moved again, this time to Venezuela. That’s where my memories began to take shape more consciously: palm trees, vibrant flowers along garden fences, indigenous women in colourful fabrics with babies on their backs, the heat and humidity, and the sounds of crickets in the night.

 

Later, I lived in Belgium, Austria, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Especially in Asia, the textures of old shop houses, the light falling through wooden screens, the incense in temples, and the rhythm of life on the street had a deep impact on me. I still remember streets filled entirely with fabric sellers, tailors, or ironmongers, each with its own world of colour, form, and sound.

OTOMYS: Your most recent exhibition with Otomys focuses on human identity, but from a female perspective. How does your work explore the many complexities of female identity and womanhood?

 

SIMONE BOON: The female perspective in my work can also be seen as a feminine perspective. A perspective that doesn’t frame identity as something fixed or absolute, but as something fluid, layered, and continuously evolving. It echoes Kierkegaard’s idea of identity belonging not to the static world of being, but to the temporal world of becoming, as he explored through the figure of Antigone. He portrayed her not simply as a rebel, but as a woman caught in the tension between personal grief and public duty, shaped by inner conflict and existential depth.

 

In my most recent work, I’ve been exploring what I call the illusioned nature of identity. Not in the superficial sense of appearances, but in the deeper way we chase after ideas of ourselves and how we build self-esteem around what we believe ourselves to be or hope to become. These identities are often aspirational, fragile, and shaped by memory, culture, and inner narratives. Sometimes they even bring us into tension with our own biological given.

 

This raises fundamental questions: What part of us is real? How much of who we are is constructed, consciously or unconsciously, and how do we navigate the shifting ground of selfhood? Many people today feel lost in that very question.

 

These states of ambiguity and becoming, the interplay between presence and performance, self and other, intrigue me deeply.

 

Approaching these questions from a feminine viewpoint doesn’t mean defining a category. It’s more about a way of seeing: intuitive, open to contradiction, emotionally attuned, and sensitive to what is fleeting. That space, where meaning slips, identity unfolds rather than arrives, and our stories are built, is where my work in this series resides.