Born in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Bouke de Vries studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven, and Central St Martin’s, London. After working with John Galliano, Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes, he switched careers and studied ceramics conservation and restoration at West Dean College.

His work questions ideas of perfection, instead seeking beauty in fragility and destruction. He draws from his extensive experience of repairing broken, damaged items in order to create unique ‘exploded’ pieces. Through this practice of deconstruction, he says that he celebrates “traumatic damage as an integral part of the object's history,” embedding it with a whole new set of narratives and new value.

Works by Bouke de Vries made at Factum Arte include:

- Fragments of Memory, 2022