dr.Carla Swerts

Carla Swerts’ field of research stretches out between sensory perception and memory, between reality and imagination. She collects fragments of different spaces, people and cultures through drawing and writing. Her impressions are recorded with archaeological precision, or are sometimes subject to abstraction, like a memory reduced to its contours. She is looking for associations and resonances between those recordings, since she is convinced that meaning arises from connections between fragments rather than from abstract conclusions. In Swerts’ current research she further investigates the narrative and imaginative possibilities of sensory observation through drawing. The drawings shown here are part of a graphic novel she is working on.

Carla Swerts obtained a PhD in the arts in 2017. She investigated how sensory observation can be used as a tool to nuance the western view on the Middle East. Her dissertation Woestijngetijden (published by MER.Paper Kunsthalle) was awarded with the Ultima Bill-Award in 2018. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at PXL-MAD and a teacher at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent.
Previous employers were Hasselt University and KASK School of Arts Ghent. Occasionally she works as an archaeological illustrator for universities and museums (KULeuven, Royal Museums of Art and History Brussels, Musée des Confluences Lyon, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden Leiden…).