Project: A House is Not a Home
Dutch Art Photographer Henriėtte van Gasteren (Sevenum, 1964), using the artist name Lilith, is a storyteller with a passion for photography. Since 2006 her self-portraits have been telling her stories. Her recurring themes have been women, identity, female archetypes, gender bending and of course, life itself. But above all freedom and equality.
Lilith creates humorous, ironic self portraits around her own home. A house shows who we are and over 5 years Lilith shared her home with her audience. Every corner of the room appears in her extraordinary photography. A story in images about women, vulnerability, eroticism and much more.
In 2012 the time for change had come. For her latest series of self-portraits home owners unknown to her have offered their houses as sets. After she contacted the newspapers, dozens of house owners offered their homes for her new self-portraits. Lilith visited the houses, often without the presence of the owner, their faith in her shown by giving her their house keys and carte blanche to use the rooms as she wished.
Lilith, in both her life and her work communicates with the things discovered around her so in these new and strange sites the artistic possibilities explode with sometimes surprising results. Her photography changed but still remained unmistakably ‘Lilith’.