Sophie Giet

My current body of work is made up of a mischievous and colourful characters who are utilitarian sculptures: lamps, vases, mirrors and other home accessories. They support expression, a play on words and references to icons or popular music that echo their intrinsic function. I choose idioms, lyrics and informations I receive from tv reports, press articles or newscat that speak to me and I treat them as the starting point of each creation.

My work is the fruit of research and playful reflection between form, function, attitudes, mimics and words. Through its intermediary, by sharing my view of man and our society, my artistic approach is to inspire reflection as much on the diversity of our thoughts and behaviour as on universal feelings and emotions.

-- Sophie Giet

Sophie Giet was born in West Africa in 1978, where she enjoyed an upbringing full of laughter, colours, rhythms and joy, and surrounded by ordinary, ritual objects transformed into things of beauty from virtually nothing. Back in Belgium, her natural focus was on artistic creation.

Having graduated from the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Saint Luc de Liège in 2000, she worked as a ceramics art restorer before opening a sculpture studio in 2008. Clay was her natural choice of main creative medium. Over the years, she enjoyed mastering clay shaping techniques and reproductions created by casting/pouring.

In 2014, she created the design studio YAWA named after her fourth first name and her country of birth. Drawing her inspiration from the artistic tradition of ceramics as well as from urban culture, she sculpts pieces that are as artistic as they are utilitarian.