Sander Coers uses photography, ceramics and AI to explore familial history and loss

It all started with a photograph. In 2020, Sander Coers’ grandfather was carried from his home in a body bag, and a photo of it was published in the Bali Post. This was right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, but his grandfather hadn’t died of the virus. He’d suffered a heart attack.

“Seeing that image felt surreal, almost like an intrusion into something so deeply personal,” says Sander. “But at the same time, it became a kind of catalyst for me.” The result is Eulogy, a deeply intimate and multi-layered project that digs into the quiet, complex legacies of family, migration and memory. “It was a starting point to explore the silences, losses, and unspoken histories that have shaped families for generations,” he says.

The Rotterdam-based artist explains that his grandfather was born to an Indonesian mother and a Dutch soldier – “caught between two cultures marked by colonialism, war, and displacement.” While his grandfather spent much of his life looking for clues about his origins, he rarely spoke of what he found.

In Eulogy, Sander picks up the unanswered questions, weaving together family photographs, objects, textiles, ceramics, and AI-generated images to reflect on what’s been lost – and what could be pieced back together. What begins as a personal story quickly unfurls into something far wider: a portrait of generational silence, and the lingering shadows of colonial history.

Photography sits at the heart of the work, but it’s the interplay between materials that allows Sander to explore the emotional textures of loss. During a trip to Indonesia he became fascinated by the way objects hold stories. “They carry history in a way that feels tactile and physical,” he explains. That idea became central to Eulogy. Ceramic tiles are UV-printed with family photos and hand-glazed in a colour palette inspired by the Bali Post photograph of his grandfather. “I’m not just telling one story, I’m creating layers, allowing the viewer to experience memory the way it actually exists: fragmented, fluid, and tied to emotion.”

Sander also incorporates AI, using family photographs to generate new visuals that are warped and ghostly. “AI fascinates me because it mimics the way memory works,” he reflects. “They exaggerate certain features, blur others… like looking at a dream of a memory rather than the memory itself.” For Sander, the technology represents a form of collective memory, shaped by wider datasets and cultural bias. “Even when it generates something ‘new’ it’s still shaped by existing perceptions of history and identity.”

A video work within Eulogy takes these ideas further. Sander used an algorithm made for web design, feeding it cut-up images of old family photos to create a rippling, morphing visual that never settles. “It reflects the way memories fade and take on new shapes depending on who is remembering them,” he says. The visual is warm and abstract, evoking a familiar sense of remembering and forgetting.

While this work deals with loss and trauma, Sander didn’t set out with those exact themes in mind. At first it was about filling in the gaps, but then the process was unexpectedly healing. “My grandmother, my father, and my relatives started sharing stories that I had never heard before,” he says. “Even though some of these histories were painful, bringing them into the open made them feel less heavy.” Eulogy isn’t just a personal archive either: “The displacement, loss, and silences I explore in Eulogy aren’t unique to my grandfather’s story; they’re woven into so many postcolonial histories,” Sander ends.