Although the idea of beauty is becoming more diverse and inclusive, throughout time, there seems to persist a standard that is casting its shadow on our contemporary and digital society. This installation displays the controversy by staying away from glamour and ideals. It is not here to be nice and shine; it’s here to be loud and red.
Similar to the magic of a carousel that spins on its own, it is highly embellished to look magical and never changes from its purpose of always rotating in the expected direction.
As a child, it had something magical. Now, I find it disturbing—the idea of the perfect and never changing, turning in on itself in a delusional fantasy.
Just like the plastic flower that never changes. It doesn’t age or grow taller. It’s supposed to represent something natural and innocent yet in essence, it perpetuates a deeply unnatural idea of everlasting beauty. We trash the pretty flowers this weekend—another product of overconsumption in the capitalist system. As Laurie Penny puts it in Meat market : "Patriarchy does not simply expect women to be decorative; it expects them to be consumable." ( Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism, 2011)
I don’t want to be nice and decorative. That’s why my decor is trash—displaying a landscape of waste and imperfection.
Rotterdam NL, 2025, Recycled PVC, Recycled Paper & Foamv
https://www.kunsthal.nl/nl/plan-je-bezoek/activiteiten/museumnacht010-2025/
13 digital prints, epoxy coating, hand-painted
Material: Paper, acrylic paint, varnish paint, resin & clothes hanger
Ich Sehe Rot Installation by Manon Malan, 3rd edition
Displayed hand-printed kitchen towels, oversized trash bags, lip gloss, and geranium flowers as a recurrent symbol referring to women's domestic labor. By dressing up a beer table and benches in red satin printed with ornamental geranium motifs, she invites the participants to reflect on traditional female stereotypes—the performance of good manners and proper behavior. This visual piece transformed over the course of the event into a platform that hosted the brunch, the workshop, and the lecture.
Flowers—especially the red geranium—carry a traditional significance of Swiss culture. They evoke memories of her grandmother, who placed great importance on appearance and on how others perceived her. In Switzerland, geraniums commonly adorn balconies, monuments, and traditional buildings. For Manon’s grandmother, displaying geraniums on the balcony symbolized her adherence to conservatism. Critically revisiting this symbol in contrast with the beer bench to expose how conservative ideals and traditions continue to codify gender roles today.
“Be Nice” Installation 2025
Dressed up Canvas — Geranium screen print and acrylic paint on PE Satin, Beer benches.
Throw the Towel — Recycled Organic cotton kitchen towels with Geranium prints
Bin Bag — screen printed recycled PE Fabric , foam filling.
Canvas position red Lip Gloss
Comfort is often imitated then truly lived
Textile installation talks about the absurdity of comfort and the conflict it brings within ourselves, but also repeating societal patterns throughout history.
It's more common to criminally repeat what we used to than change or evolve for the better a soft barricade is made out of sleeping bags, looking like material.
From faraway, you can be easily misread as sleeping bags, but if you look closely, you find 2 body bags.Even though the installation is soft, the objects are brutal, like a blockaded exit or entrance and body bags designed to carry corpses.
soft - inviting, comforting, what is usually hard and cold.
Comfort often gets put too fast in context with achievements, money and materialism. To often we focus on doing, instead of just letting go.
While we over focus on it and are living death, while true freedom passes us by ( wanm kebt death) that’s why I chose to work with the body bags.
Objects/Material:
A Brick Wall - Soft Barricade
Polyester print collage of the repetition of various
3.60m x 1.90m
Touch wood blanket
Textile printed with a chipboard pattern (which is also a form of recycled trash wood).
Silver Body bag
with black and white collage repetitive print made out of the confidential lining of police envelopes.
Grey body bag out of letters of the tax authority
More info about the Exhibition
https://www.nestruimte.nl/en/exhibitions/a-scenic-route-to-self
Pêche de Nuits group exhibition 2023 at Peach Art Space in Rotterdam
The first ‘car window painting’ I made. I wanted to work with cars because they are a big victim in the world of vandalism or confrontation. I found the front windscreen in a Berlin car scrapyard. Even for them, it was completely useless trash. This time made an old Range Rover back side window my side
I recycled it into a canvas straightaway without cleaning it. Rather than a flat painting, I wanted to give the viewer the experience of seeing both sides of the ‘canvas’.
Vandalising has something very relieving, car windows remind me of that why I love to work with them.
Material:
Glass, paper, silk, resin, styrofoam, ratchet straps
https://www.peachopposite.com/
Pêche de Nuits group exhibition 2023 at Peach Art Space in Rotterdam
The first ‘car window painting’ I made. I wanted to work with cars because they are a big victim in the world of vandalism or confrontation. I found the front windscreen in a Berlin car scrapyard. Even for them, it was completely useless trash. This time made an old Range Rover back side window my side
I recycled it into a canvas straightaway without cleaning it. Rather than a flat painting, I wanted to give the viewer the experience of seeing both sides of the ‘canvas’.
Vandalising has something very relieving, car windows remind me of that why I love to work with them.
Material:
Glass, paper, silk, resin, styrofoam, ratchet straps
HOW TO DO IT?
Please read carefully and follow the description ‘stepper by stepper” and end in comfort!
As a participant, the only thing you have to do is: believe in it!
Let's say for at least 63 %, easy right? For the rest you can make it as you fake it, just don't tell anyone. For that, there is a clean washing at the end of the journey and you will be free from all your misconduct or bad behaviour.
Do not have any hopes & you won't be disappointed, it will be just fine.
And cool people, don't worry It also works for very cool people who wear sunglasses all the time! This installation can bring you a greater future, so don't miss your chance.
The way to a successful wellness & spiritual parkour journey :
At first feel free to do the parkour together with a friend or a stranger that is not too strange.
Stepper 1 / Enlightenment
Your journey starts with the chandelier.
Find the object and stand close to it.
The chandelier light is not here to back up your D3 vitamins, but it definitely will blind you with enlightenment for a brighter future, especially when you look away from it again.
Please take your time for your enlightenment before you follow the next step.
Stepper 2 / Stroke wood & Molotov's
Sit or kneel in front of stepper 2 and find yourself in a comfortable position
In the Netherlands, people spend about 2.5 hours on a smartphone.
This is a scrolling recovery session, which can be quite scary, but it is a very important part of your journey.
Please stroke the wood pattern of the Molotov's carefully. With this therapeutic action, you will enhance scrolling recovery and will strengthen your resistance to smartphone use.
There is no rush here, focus also on your breathing to meet deep relaxation.
Free like a bird /stepper 3
Find yourself in front of the spiky stuff
Think about 3 things that make you happy at the moment.
Think about 6 activities you would do in the future, reading books, travel plans, a project or eating popcorn at Kino Rotterdam, feel free to choose whatever triggers your excitement.
While you think about those 9 things, Use both sides of your hands and massage them
The Urban trigger point massage is activating your possibilities, after this session, you shall feel free like a bird nothing will be stopping you.
Holly water / clean washing /stepper 4
Poor yourself a small sip
Depending on your needs you are welcome to choose your preferred holy water.
On offer, we have blessed Rotterdam water or Vodka.
No one is perfect, that is why we end this wellness & spiritual parkour journey with a liquid ritual. Holy water for clean washing; this ritual has the power to wash your sins, bad vibes and gilt away.
Please enjoy this sip it's only a limited offer of Manon Malan
Cheers, you made it!
And don't forget to be nice and thankful to yourself anything is possible you are a free bird.
Material:
Kalashikov cocktail sculpture, Glass & printed silk
OPENINGS group exhibition at Extra Practice 2024, Rotterdam
I was invited to create some work with the exhibition title 4 OPENINGS
im a visual researcher, so taking images is a big part of my practice, as im very interested in public and private related topics. I often photograph different kinds of borders.
That's why I decided to make 3 different windows with a visual collage of my openings!
Images made on my research trip in Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris and the USA
Material: Digital Print on paper, Frame: wood/ plexiglass
Size:
White window
Black window
Small window
Collage out a selection of images of openings taken on trips in Los Angeles, Brussels, Paris and Rotterdam.
INSTALLATION, GROWING SPACE, 2020
This installation is intended to revert the viewer away from the Corona frenzy. The print itself stems from my degree show project which was inspired by how vandalism is beautiful, especially in reference to the vandalisation of a number of colonial statues in the USA in 2016 and again in the UK in 2020 as a response to BLM protests.
It presents itself as a spectacle of exotic plants in a botanical garden like the Q Gardens London, and so the way these textiles look is as though they are trying to get out. An organic cluster of jackets is the final product.
Big thank you to Ecological Textiles Netherlands for supporting this project with beautiful Materials so for Stitching NAC - Kamiel Verschuren curating this exhibition and also big thank you to Growing Space Wielewaal for the space opportunity.
GROUP EXHIBITION AT FOUNDATION B.A.D IN ROTTERDAM 2020
This project is about flowers and their representations on textiles.
More specifically, their utilisation. Floral print exemplifies dressing to look pretty and “nice”. If so, are flowers seen as fake? Can they be a mask by which we entertain others with illusions of prettiness and fragility?
Beyond their overtly feminine context, (which I find to be a poor representation
of female strength), they are also specifically used in a similarly troubling way: In the area of Wielewaal in South Rotterdam, I found many small empty houses had windows that were covered up with a flower print foil. They cover up the crime.
What is more, these houses are waiting to be destroyed so that new, more prestigious (and more expensive) houses replace them. Here again, the appearance seems to be not only secondary to the reality of these derelict buildings, but also a substitute to a sustainable solution such as renovation, restoration and care.
It is also ironic when contextualising flowers in both the fashion and the flower industry. Since they are very large industries, absolutely not beautiful and largely polluting. In essence, floral prints have very little to do with nature.
Big thank you to Foundation b.a.d to give me such a warm welcome to Rotterdam
AUGUST 2020
Zurich based art collective Secret Gäng presented WRAPPED, Believe in you Storage at Perla Mode Gallery, 2015 Zurich
SOLO SHOW AT DISPLAY BERLIN 2019
Is an extension of my CSM Graduate Fashion Print Collection so Mind Your Head!!
The Outlet at Display was to showcase the additional elements of my graduate collection, which would normally be categorised as ‘waste’. In order to recontextualise my processes, scans, tests, unused prints and textiles of my degree show, I gave them the space to present themselves.
The show consisted of, ‘waste’ products and re-established formats:
For example, my scans were printed and then draped and shaped in resin
(see next slide). The car window was an additional found object that was sourced from a scrapyard. It acts as a portal for my unused prints to be displayed over and is a sculpture to be viewed from both sides.
Furthermore, the jumper prints (see right), were labelled and sold as ‘outlet products’ and re-evaluate the process of design once more.
The term outlet itself is a humorous way to indicate they’re ‘imperfection’ and otherness. This also sets a tone of urgency for the viewer. Think Black Friday, but in an installation.
My graduation collection was a big health and safety issue! Please mind the gap.
Thank you, thank you, Thank you
FINAL COLLECTION AT CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS 2018
The following collection mimics historical sculptures in the midst of being transported which also coincides with vandalism. It is the most imperfect moments of a statue’s life.
With this, the statues have a new life, their content is devoured by the contemporary and they no longer hold their royal status.
Our society alterations are more beautiful and certainly more honest than the original idealisations of these works.
Materials used: resin, silk, cotton, wood, Styrofoam, screen printing techniques, digital silk prints, foil, laser cutting, embroidery.
The project was selected for the CSM press show 2018 It has won the Sally Woodward Award.
2013
Collaboration with Mia Špindler
Up State Gallery Zurich
Pile of clothes, anchored with epoxy
FOR GRAYSON PERRY 2016
Some London residential neighbourhoods feel empty and anonymous. Instead of pedestrians and shops, there are trash bins on the street, CCTV cameras and façades of old draped lace curtains. It almost seems as if these curtains cover up the life and you wonder if it is safer behind the curtains or outside.
The custom piece made for and sold to British artist Grayson Perry.
2010
Collaboration with Mayo Irion
The Actionist Art Festival in the spirit of the international DADA Festival.
exhibition at Motel Nirwana Rote Fabrik, Zürich
Installation: Buy your we!ght, brick pieces per gram.
Sale of pieces of the white brick wall to raise money for the bill of the red factory hiring professional painters to paint the white facade back to red after painstakingly having painted the red factory white.
2010
A group of people including Manon Malan painted the whole territory of "Rote Fabrik" (red factory), a cultural center (theoretically youth center since the 80s) in Zürich, white overnight.
It was a loud call for change and with it came a unique base for new creation.
2010 SECRET GÄNG
Work presented in two exhibitions
Perla Moda Gallery Zurich & The Young Artist Award 2010 ZKB Zurich
15 artists got exactly one kilogram of clay delivered by SECRET GÄNG and the task to form a ball (german: Kugel) from it with the following rules:
-use all the clay
-aim for a smooth surface
-no cavity inside
SECRET GÄNG also picked up the balls and paid 50 swiss francs for each one.
complete list of partaking artists coming soon
2014
London
City trash and mountain nostalgia turns into shirt and printed scarf.
GARMENT & SHORT FILM
INFLATABLE GARMENT, WON THE CSM BELANCIAGA AWARD 2016
I wanted to work with the clear influence of a traditional cardinal dress and transform it into a more modern design. During my research, I came across one particular red evening coat of Balenciaga’s Winter Collection 1954, and it caught my eye. I found these historical paintings fascinating and was especially interested in the similarities with Balenciaga’s own design work.
The form of modernity I chose for this piece is the refugee crisis; a highly sensitive and tragic situation that pervades contemporary life. I hope the juxtaposition between the apparent frivolity of the fashion industry and the stark reality of mass migration can help draw attention to this extreme social issue.
I continued documenting and filming material for this project in Lesbos, while I was working in a refugee camp in 2016.
In 2018 I presented my Short film at the Sustainability week in Bilbao.
SECRET GÄNG
open call to dig out old piece of work from storage and enter it in the SECRET GÄNG auction
This print was created by Norman Wilkinson in World War I. It served to camouflage ships and submarines from radar detection. It was the first time in Europe that women had to enter the industry en masse to replace the men that got sent to war.
It was historically the first time in our modern culture where so many women had
a purpose that went beyond the household setting. The role of the woman started to take on different shapes as the Dazzle printed warships did too.
The print is used to create a spectacle out of the woman wearing it, to counteract her previous role in society. The garment, therefore, is made to stand out not blend in.
2012
London
Recycled garments,sprayed, dipped and dried in new shapes later used as a reference for new fashion and print design development.
2011 SECRET GÄNG
Schaukasten Herisau, Switzerland
The big art exhibition, 50 involved artists, in the small showcase
2011 SECRET GÄNG
Zürich
Performance to install new benches for the homeless and junkies whom the city had previously stolen theirs from.
Duration of presence of present to the neighbourhood two weeks.
2010 SECRET GÄNG
group exhibition at the National Gallery in Prague
Euro
Cross
Pony
2010 Accessible Installation in Pignia GR, Switzerland
Collaboration with August Blum
Old farm tools, 5 meters high
The installation is accessible on two levels, one being a stage for sound performance by Stini Arn making music on an old weaving loom.
2009 SECRET GÄNG
crashing the party
Self-invited participation in the diploma exhibition of ZHdK, art university Zürich.
House constructed from old school tables, assembly without nails or screws.
Eight-step guide to getting officially licensed as an artist, printing your own diploma in a few seconds.
350 artists managed to obtain perfect ZHdK diplomas, indistinguishable from the original.
2009 SECRET GÄNG
Production Design
Construction of props inclusive tank (german: Panzer) for music clip helping a campaign for a ban of war-material-export from Switzerland.
warface video clip https://vimeo.com/9864106
Music: Evelinn Trouble
Politics: GSoA (group switzerland without army)
Camera: Carlotta, Iason and Markus.
Production: Sonja Levy
Directed by Benjamin Weiss
