Anouk Kruithof
Anouk Kruithof (born 1981 in Dordrecht, the Netherlands) is a transdisciplinary visual artist, who lives and works between Brussels, Belgium; Berlin, Germany; and Botopasi, Suriname.
[1] Her practice engages with social themes and their relation to digital visual culture, drawing on the surplus of online images and their impact on human connectivity, mental health, and geopolitical awareness.
Her work encompasses various media, including photography, sculpture, collage, video and animation, artist books, installation, websites, text, performance, and social, community-based projects.
[2] Kruithof's work has been widely recognised and exhibited internationally, including at MoMA in New York as part of “Ocean of Images” (2015), as well as through solo exhibitions at Museum Tinguely in Basel, Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Kunsthal Rotterdam, FOAM in Amsterdam, and Viernulvier (formerly Vooruit) in Ghent, Belgium.
Her multifaceted projects are often created in the spirit of positive reflection and engagement with the affective impact of digital culture on the contemporary human psyche, addressing issues like alienation, anxiety, exhaustion, discomfort, shame, or self-validation.
[2] In her practice, Kruithof reflects the complexity of globalization through the use of various media, the reuse of found images and materials, as well as through the abundance and quantity of these elements met in specific forms of her projects.A substantial role in Kruithof's practice plays the transformation of the image through sculptures, videos, and large scale immersive installations, expanding the understanding of photography and visual culture through its translation into a physical object.
[6] Tracing the paradoxes of visual language and global ethical dilemmas, Kruithof's work often operates through mechanisms inscribed in the problems she critically and playfully addresses.
The creation of her works entails an ecological process by means of recycling, re-use, as well as references to the capitalist culture through accumulation, image appropriation and excess.
Her work talks about juxtaposed qualities of physical and digital, and converses with motives of universality, individualism, liberation, spiritual and natural wisdom, oppressiveness, embodiment and technology, dystopia, and joy, approached both critically and openly.
Highlighting the technological mediation of the world, her work remains close to the human sensibility of its understanding, feeling, living and transforming, as well as to the notions of natural resources and their potentiality.
Many of Kruithof's works revolve around collective engagement and relationships with temporary or local communities, as well as research oriented on teamwork and collaboration, as seen in projects like Universal Tongue, El Camino Abierto, Niet Meer Normaal, and Happy Birthday to You.
In Happy Birthday to You, Anouk Kruithof engaged with 10 patients of the Altrecht psychiatric unit in Den Dolder, The Netherlands during her artistic residency at Het Vijfde Seizoen in 2011.
El Camino Abierto (2018) was developed as part of Kruithof's residency at Fundación Casa Wabi, in collaboration with a group of children in the village of Cacalote, Oaxaca, Mexico.
No Longer Normal), which invited over 300 participants of all ages to creatively respond to the notions of “common sense” and default social norms, as well as rare natural phenomena.
Referencing a specific historical period, Enclosed Content Chatting Away in the Colour Invisibility reflects on the status of neglected cultural goods in the age of advancing digitalization.
Using a large collection of screenshots from Instagram accounts of corporations, government agencies and institutions, Kruithof appropriated and recontextualised the meaning of their promotional materials into new messages and intentions, provoking a conversation around digital futures.
[14] In 2023, the Centre Photographique d'Île-de-France in Paris opened a solo exhibition titled Tentacle Togetherness of Anouk Kruithof, showcasing works produced between 2013 and 2022.
