Visual artist Inge Meijer will be the new Artist in Residence at NIAS. During her fellowship, Meijer will carry out artistic research into the role of plants in art exhibitions up to the 1990s, and into the relationship between art and plants. The fellowship is a programme together with the KNAW's Society of Arts.
Art museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam once showed houseplants as part of their exhibitions, a practice that has since disappeared. Because the plants have received little attention from art historians or critics, Meijer published “The Plant Collection” in 2019, a book about her research into the plants of the Stedelijk Museum. As an artist-in-residence at the NIAS, Meijer will expand her research to the MoMA, where plants were on display in the exhibition spaces from 1937 to 1997.
The underlying theme of the project deals with the relationship between art and plants, and the division between culture and nature. Do we experience a Rothko differently with a houseplant next to it? What is the value attributed to house plants, compared to the works of art? As a visual artist, partly raised in the countryside, Meijer is interested in this relationship between art and nature. In her previous work – Car Garden – she explored her own car as a mobile botanical garden, and in the installation Wrapped Trees she reflects on the practice of project developers to wrap trees so that birds do not nest in them, which would delay felling permits and therefore the building project itself.
Inge Meijer is Artist in Residence from February to July 2023 and will work on a book and an interdisciplinary symposium during her residency.
1946 P.M. Piet Mondriaan, Memorial exhibition, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Biography
Inge Meijer (1986) is a visual artist. In her work Meijer examines the uneasy relationship between humans and their environment. She graduated from ArtEZ Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Arnhem and has done residencies in Colombia, Korea, Germany and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Last year her solo exhibition Nothing is Something to be Seen was held at the AKINCI gallery, Amsterdam and the Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Her work is currently on display in Museum Schiedam, Dordrechts Museum, Museum IJsselstein and Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven as part of the Ostfriesland Biennale.
NIAS and the Academy of Arts
The Artist-in-Residence fellowship offers talented artists from all artistic disciplines an opportunity to work on a project within an international and interdisciplinary academic setting. NIAS and the Society of Arts set up the artist-in-residence fellowship to promote interaction between the arts and sciences.
Previous artists-in-residence include Micha Hamel, Jan Rosseel, Arne Hendriks and Ana María Goméz López. NIAS and the Society of Arts are part of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.