Maen Florin (°1954, Kleine-Brogel, Belgium) is a visual artist who lives and works in Schelderode, near Ghent. She studied sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. From 1979 to 2014 she taught in adult education at the Academy in Ghent.
Since the mid-1980s, Florin has developed a distinctive sculptural practice. Her artistic breakthrough came in 1983 with The Blue Bird, a sculpture of a young boy attempting to fly, inspired by her newborn son. This work marked the beginning of her personal visual language. Expressive, colourful sculptures in painted plaster and bronze followed, initially featuring a series of dancers and later mythologically inspired figures. These were presented in her first solo exhibition at the ICC in Antwerp. In 1990 she realised Landscape for the Nieuwe Kerkplein in Haarlem (NL), her first sculpture for public space.
Around 2000, Florin created a series of seven wounded adolescents, including Secrets and Silence. In 2005 The Flower Woman was installed on a village square, followed by works such as The Cloud Blower (2008) and The Pink Head (2010). For about ten years, she realised almost one public art project per year. From 2007 onwards, she also worked on her so-called “dolls”: sculptures composed of different materials, departing from the idea that sculpture can act as a mediator between inner experience and the outside world.
In 2014, Maen Florin decided to follow a masterclass in ceramics, which gave her practice a new direction. From 2015 onwards, she created life-sized ceramic heads. These are not portraits, but composite, archetypal faces, informed by memory, photography and painting, with references to artists such as Velázquez and Soutine. These heads are inward-looking. Their eyes are often closed, and behind their facial expressions lies an entire life—memories, vulnerability, failure and hope.
In 2016, Florin presented these heads at the Kunstenfestival Watou. In 2018, she undertook a residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) in Oisterwijk (NL), where she produced eight monumental heads. In the exhibition Playing at Being Human (2020) in Mechelen, she showed not only heads but also new upright figures. During the COVID period, she created monumental ceramic pietàs, from which her first “trees” emerged. Since then, trees have become a central motif in her work.
From 2020 onwards, Florin has been working on a new series of iconic sculptures in which human, animal and plant forms merge. These phantasmagorical, often female figures refer to human-induced mutations and the radical transformations of the environment. They embody a protective, nurturing and maternal force and explore deformation and connectedness, vulnerability and care in a world in transition.
Clay has always played an important role in Florin’s work—initially as an intermediary material, today as a final medium. Her sculptures are built directly in clay and finished with her own glazing process, consisting of transparent, watercolour-like layers. This layered technique lends her work a particular depth and intensity. The creative process—an interplay of intuition, chance and material—forms a central driving force.
In recent years, Maen Florin has participated in numerous exhibitions and projects in Belgium and abroad, including the Beaufort Triennial on the Belgian coast (2021), Le Voyage à Nantes in France (2023), ISELP Brussels (2023), the Biennale of Ceramic Art in South Korea (2024), KMSKA Antwerp (2024), Horst Arts & Music Festival (2025) and ARTZUID Amsterdam (2025).
Texts
2024 – Together with the world: Balancing the Earth – Gyeonggi Ceramics Biennale
2023 Guy Duplat – Maen Florin’s strange paradise, inspired by Gauguin – La Libre Belgique
Christine Vuegen in Glean nr1, 2023
2023 Johan September – Out of paradise
2023 Jenna Darde – Pacific (Le Voyage à Nantes)
2023 Jenna Darde – Commedia (Le Voyage à Nantes)
2023 Catherine Henkinet – Hybrides – After the flood
–
2022 Emmanuelle Indekeu – Fundamental Occurences
2021 Johan September – Beaufort 2021
2021 Jean Michel Bottequin – Histrion
2021 Jozefien Van Beek – The puppet master in Maen Florin
2020 Sigrid Bosmans and Hannah Itterbeke – The Present-Absent Gaze in the sculptures of Maen Florin
2020 Koen Leemans – Playing at being Human
2018 Hans Martens – Paradox and ambiguity
2018 Erno Vroonen – Some thoughts about Maen Florin’s exhibition, Illusion
2017 Stefan Hertmans – The Hunchback deep inside
2017 Stefan Hertmans – The Hunchback deep inside – Sculptures