My practice examines the social rules that choreograph everyday life, from table manners, dress codes to rituals of grief, and the subtle gestures that signal belonging. I approach these systems as performances: fragile constructions that reveal their absurdity the moment they are disrupted.
The central idea of my work is that solemnity is not seriousness, but rather the performance of seriousness. When humor enters a solemn space, the structure collapses. What remains is the exposed logic of rules, arbitrary, historical, and deeply tied to power.
Using staged images and installations, I exaggerate familiar gestures and rituals to reveal the tension between the rules we inherit and the bodies that struggle to perform them.
By amplifying everyday rituals, I create images where order cracks and the absurd becomes visible. In this rupture, viewers encounter the strange performance of social order for what it actually is: a fragile, human-made construction.
The book ‘Where Wear ?’ is available for sale.
For more information and purchase, send an email to hancotte.lau@gmail.com
+32 4 93633314
hancotte.lau@gmail.com
@lauhancotte
Exhibitions
2025 - “Kunst van ons voedsel” (group exhibition) - Provinciehuis Zuid-Holland, Den Haag
2025 - It looks right, but not quite - Graduation Show Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
2025 - “Underscore” (group exhibition) - Paradise West x KABK, The Hague
2024 - “A Butterfly was Finding Out Yesterday How to Make Sense of Misunderstandings” (group exhibition) - The Grey Space in the Middle, The Hague
2023 - “Abandonned Urges” (group exhibition) - Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Publications
‘Setting your table - Suggestion for an Original Table Setting” - 50 copies
“Where Wear?” - 50 copies
“I Have Settled for Skeletons” - 5 copies