Katrien de Blauwer was born in the small provincial town of Ronse (Belgium). After a troubled childhood, She moved to Ghent at a young age to study painting. Later she attended the Royal Academy in Antwerp to study fashion. A study she abandoned. It was at that time she made her first collage books. At a later age she began collecting, cutting and recycling images as therapeutic self investigation.

De Blauwer calls herself a "photographer without a camera". She collects and recycles pictures and photos from old magazines and papers. Her work deals with memory, by accumulation rather than by substraction.


“This is a story of three houses, three women and three bedrooms. The houses are located on the same street.
At my parents house I have a separate bedroom with a big cupboard.
At my grandmother’s house, I share the bed with her.
At the neighbors there are two rooms: one big and one small. Sometimes we sleep in the same bed.
I have a recurring dream: I can’t clean up my room at my parents house, nor can I find my clothes. They must be in one of the three bedrooms.”
- Katrien De Blauwer