yannick tossing.
Yannick Tossing’s artistic practice is driven by a long-term research into the profound challenges faced by people living with Huntington’s disease, inspired by more than fifteen years of observing the illness within his own family. Through sculpture, photography and installation, he explores both the physical and cognitive consequences of the disease, transforming familiar objects and images into metaphors for the progressive loss of autonomy, memory and perception.
His sculptural works focus on the physical impact of Huntington’s disease by reimagining everyday objects that gradually become difficult, or even impossible, to use. Combining found objects with plaster and, in earlier works, 3D pen interventions, he distorts chairs, shopping carts and other familiar forms to reflect the loss of motor function. A recurring visual language contrasts clean white surfaces with vivid orange deformations, symbolising the tension between the healthy object and the disease progressively overtaking it. More recently, his research has returned to sculpture through an exploration of plaster, allowing him to investigate these everyday challenges with renewed material sensitivity.
Alongside sculpture, Tossing developed a body of photographic collages exploring the cognitive dimensions of Huntington’s disease. Through layered compositions that merge different places, moments and memories, he creates dreamlike landscapes where reality becomes fragmented and uncertain. These works investigate memory loss, confusion and altered perception, using physical superposition as a metaphor for the complexity and fragility of human memory.
Together, these different practices form a coherent artistic research that seeks to translate the invisible experience of Huntington’s disease, and the general fear of memory loss, into visual form. Rooted in personal experience yet addressing universal questions of memory, identity and resilience, his work invites viewers to reflect on the ways illness and time transforms our relationship with the world and the everyday objects and memories that shape our lives.
