Astrid Vlasman is a visual artist and lives and works in Leiden, the Netherlands. She studied at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. For years she has been working on large collages with used paper and mixed media. The basic material for her collage work is used paper from daily packaging products. With this she plasters her (large) canvases. On her paper paintings, she shows people in their awkwardness, vulnerability, and strength. Vlasman tries to make the invisible of man visible in layers of paper. It also shows abandoned interiors in which the human traces are still visible.
''I love the vibrancy of paper of the function it has had as a vegetable bag, test, envelope, shopping bag or wrapping paper. With this material that I come across every day; I stick my canvases. I cherish the volatility of old paper and appreciate it as an expression: it takes on a new shape because of me. For me, paper in my hands means freedom, an endless space full of possibilities. It's material I experimented with playfully as a toddler. This creates work in which people and their environment are central. Often it is women in uncomfortable situations or attitudes, who look lost and dreamily into the world at an unwatched moment. I make the uncertainties and vulnerability of man visible. Due to the layering of the paper, you get into the skin of the subject. In the interiors I make you can still see the traces that people have left behind, a glass on the table, a book on the floor. They are out of the picture themselves. They are abandoned spaces. Rooms and kitchens where it looks like someone else was present. With papier-mâché I made hundreds of chairs. The models for this are intuitive. During the drying process, the chair skews, giving it its own character. They become clumsy, clumsy objects with human traits that together form a strong seat army.