Papercut portraits

My paper-cut portraits explore how familiar figures from art and performance can be reinterpreted through line, contrast, and negative space. Working from visual references, I simplify faces, clothing, gestures, and surrounding details into interconnected shapes cut by hand from paper.

The series includes reinterpretations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Milkmaid, as well as a composition inspired by the ballet Giselle. In the Vermeer works, familiar paintings are transformed into bold black-and-white structures. Facial expressions, folds of clothing, and everyday gestures are reduced to essential lines while remaining recognisable. In Giselle, the theatrical setting and human figures are translated into a more fragmented visual language, where movement, gesture, and atmosphere become as important as individual likeness.

I am particularly interested in the balance between recognition and reduction. Cutting inevitably removes visual information, yet what remains can make a posture, expression, or gesture more concentrated. Negative space becomes an active part of the image.