Letting Go: Juriaan’s Ring, Glasses and Braid

Year of Work: 2026

Suspended mixed media sculpture

Dimensions: 120×60cm

This suspended kinetic sculpture consists of hundred metal belt buckles bound together with black tie wraps. The structure forms a tear shaped loop in which circular elements rotate independently, creating a slow choreography of orbiting parts.

Integrated within this framework are personal objects: a wedding ring, a Tintin brooch, a broken bracelet, glasses and a childhood braid — speaking of love, identity and change.

Each object represents a phase of life — youth, love, fatherhood. Suspended within industrial repetitions of belt buckles, these intimate relics become part of a larger cycle. The rotating rings evoke planetary orbits, the passage of time and the inevitability of transformation.

The work speaks to the paradox at the heart of Letting Go: objects accumulate meaning through lived experience, yet eventually must be released — whether by choice, circumstance or time itself. The sculpture suggests that letting go is not disappearance, but movement: memories continue to turn within us, reshaped by distance.

With poetry by Yvonne van Hest - Yzinnig.nl

Donated objects used in this work:

With photography by Myra Eskes and Bodil de Jong Fotografie