Nicolette Bénard is a Dutch sculptural artist whose work investigates how identity is shaped and projected through cultural icons.
Trained as a goldsmith at Vakschool Schoonhoven, she approaches sculpture with a strong awareness of material, precision and finish. Refinement is not decorative but structural to her practice.
Her work originated from observing the persistence of the icon, images that remain unchanged while the world around them shifts. What interests her is not the object itself, but the ideal it carries.
In her so-called art icon objects, familiar forms are recontextualised and reduced to fragments. The legs remain only as archetype, carriers of posture, projection and expectation. Detached from their original meaning, they become sculptural elements within a broader inquiry.
In the ongoing series The Veiled Self, the human face, our primary marker of individuality, disappears beneath subtle, veil-like structures. Sculptural forms take its place, enclosed in plexiglass. The body remains, yet the person recedes.
The works explore identity, projection and containment, as transparency create both exposure and boundary. What appears visible is quietly layered and partially concealed.
Her work has been presented internationally in galleries, art fairs and museum contexts across Europe, Asia and the United States.
She lives and works in the Netherlands.
