Nicolette Bénard

Sculptural Artist – The Veiled Self
Nicolette Bénard is a Dutch sculptural artist whose work explores how identity is shaped, revealed and quietly concealed through cultural icons.

In her ongoing series The Veiled Self, the human face, our most immediate marker of individuality, disappears. In its place emerge sculptural forms enclosed in plexiglass. The body remains, yet the person seems to soften, almost dissolve.

Transparency and containment enter into a subtle dialogue. The plexiglass both protects and restricts. The figures appear preserved, carefully composed, almost serene, as if identity itself has taken a brief pause.

Rooted in her background as a goldsmith trained at Vakschool Schoonhoven, Bénard brings precision and refinement to her sculptural language. Her work moves between figuration and objecthood, balancing elegance with a quiet sense of unease that invites a second look.

Each work contains a genuine freshwater pearl, unaltered and understated, serving as a discreet signature of the artist and as an ode to her mother, who never left the house without her pearls and felt incomplete without them. Within the sculptures, the pearl becomes a small yet essential core.

There is clarity, but never complete certainty.
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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 int...

2026
Affordable Art Fair, Brussels (BE)
2025–2026
MPV Gallery, Oisterwijk (NL)
­Moya Museum, Oisterwijk (NL)
2025
PAN Amsterdam (NL)
Affordable Art Fair, Hamburg (DE)
Affordable Art Fair, Berlin (DE)
Affordable Art Fair, Vienna (AT)
Affordable Art Fair, Brussels (BE)
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
Galerie Nassau 42, Antwerp (BE)
2024
Galerie Bettina von Arnim, Paris (FR)
Galerie Nassau 42, Antwerp (BE)
Affordable Art Fair, Hamburg (DE)
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
Affordable Art Fair, Brussels (BE)
2023
Whatz Art Fair, Singapore (SG)
Affordable Art Fair, Singapore (SG)
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
Art The Hague (NL)
Affordable Art Fair, New York (USA)
Whatz Art Fair, Taipei (TW)
Art Palm Beach, Florida (USA)
Galerie Bettina von Arnim, Paris (FR)
Galerie Caractère, Neuchâtel (CH)
Galerie Nassau 42, Antwerp (BE)
2022
CONTEXT Art Miami (USA)
Affordable Art Fair, Hamburg (DE)
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
Affordable Art Fair, Brussels (BE)
Affordable Art Fair, New York (USA)
Art The Hague (NL)
KunstRAI, Amsterdam (NL)
North Sea Jazz Festival (NL)
The HUB 2.0, Amsterdam Fashion Week (NL)
Gender Project, Berlin (DE)
2021
CONTEXT Art Miami (USA)
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
Affordable Art Fair, New York (US...