Ever since her graduation in 2001 Stijns has examined contemporary visualizations. Initially she did so by initiating projects. For each project a manifest was written holding rules concerning which medium to use, image construction and use of materials that dictated the appearance of her work. These rules were derived from the ones dictating the present visualizations.
After some time the analysis of the current form idiom was sought nearer to herself. She literally assumed a more distant attitude towards her work and with her pictures of the backside of her own studio-settings she tore apart her creative process. That is how an ongoing series developed that was exhibited at LhGWR in 2009. In this series (The Making Of) she enabled herself to decompose parts of her own form idiom. Later on she also did this in regard to her living environment.
Stijns often focusses her analysis on the actual parts that together compose the image. The underlying mechanism of 'the actual moment of taking the picture' is her point of focus. However in her new work this approach is subjected to Stijns' analytical and destructive eye. By leaving the controllable environment of her studio and adding an unpredictable factor to her pictures, she shifts her research to the looking at the scene as a whole. Although not literally, she takes ten steps back to subject the scene she encounters to a thorough analysis and in an intuitive and associative way she enables herself to translate this in her pictures.
In this exhibition work will be on display of her artist-in-residency period in Beijing and her 3-weeks stay in Manilla. Stijns laid her Western eyes upon the Eastern view on the capitalist West. In her new work she captures with what mentality the urban development of these metropoles come to live to Western standards. Both cities have their own traditions and culturally defined perspectives on urban development. The use, mixture and implementation of Western ideals within these traditions results in situations which are at the least remarkable.