Combining glass with moving image and sound, Lieve Van Stappen constructs physically and emotionally brittle spaces in which symbolic objects meet, mix, and simmer in a sentient stew. In her installations, which function as laboratories for memory, glass is the vehicle of containment. A complex material fraught with ambiguities, glass protects but it does not mask or hide. Transparent and translucent objects hold the fleeting contents of dreams and nightmares, personal and social histories, sorrow and hope. They appear to shift, transform, and even melt with the responsibility of bearing witness. The themes that Van Stappen explores in her work are based on her studies of acts of war and domestic violence, reconstruction and reconciliation, social revolt and liberation, love and loss.
 (Tina Oldknow, Curator of Modern Glass at the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York)