Celia Hadeler
Celia Hadeler is a Dutch-based contemporary artist of Peruvian and German descent. Her Folds tapestries use the classical trompe-l'œil technique to turn something as ordinary as a crease into an exercise in perception.
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ABOUT
Celia Hadeler is a contemporary artist based in the Netherlands. Her work is driven by the interplay of contrasts, cultural, emotional and visual. Of Peruvian and German descent, she grew up between two value systems: the expressive, extroverted character of her Peruvian family and the more introverted, structured approach of her German side. That duality continues to shape how she handles material, form and perception.
The direction of her practice was set by a period of severe migraines. Looking for grounding and clarity, she began cutting folds out of fashion magazines. What started as a way of coping turned into a discovery: the folds produced unexpected compositions, a balance of tension and softness, and the beginnings of a visual language of her own. It marked the start of a long-term investigation that continues today.
Folds are everywhere once you start looking, a napkin on a table, the clothes you are wearing, a bag lifting in the wind. Hadeler is drawn to precisely that ordinariness, and to the unexpected compositions that emerge from it. During her studies at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague she developed her interest in combining traditional and contemporary techniques, and that combination is what makes the work function.
It comes together in her Folds tapestries, in which she applies the classical trompe-l'œil technique, literally "deceive the eye", to play with perception, illusion and visual ambiguity. The result reads as three-dimensional while remaining resolutely flat: the viewer sees a fold that is not there, and keeps looking to work out where the surface actually lies.
The series has also extended beyond the wall. Her Folds design was taken up by Moooi Carpets for their Signature Collection, produced in ivory, grey and nude in wool and polyamide, where the trompe-l'œil effect gains an additional layer from the tactility of the material itself.
Her work has been shown at MOYA, the Museum of Young Art.