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]
In 2008, she became a resident at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Since then, she has lived in Berlin, New York City, Mexico City,Botopasi, and Brussels for extended periods, and has traveled to over 40 countries worldwide. The recognition and experience of different cultural contexts have been influential factors in her artistic work.[1]
Art practice
Kruithof's body of work focuses at large on the representation of the acute global social matters reflecting on post-internet human condition linked to excessive image production, post production and circulation. She works through observation and a large collection of images, including online viral contents, which depict urgent global phenomena, such as the consequences of climate change, the impacts of globalization, the environmental pollution, the government surveillance, the privacy and social inequality. Her works emanate colorful visuality, empathy, and, at times, humor, often linked to human relations, dialogue, and storytelling. The themes in her work frequently activate tension between the natural, the artificial, and the technological. Her projects are often created as multifaceted tools for 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 holds juxtaposed qualities of physical and digital, as well as motives of universality, individualism, liberation, spiritual and natural wisdom, oppressiveness, embodiment and technology, dystopia, and joy, approached both critically and openly. [7]
Many of Kruithof's projects revolve through collective engagement and relationship with temporary or local communities, as well as research-oriented teamwork. Highlighting the technological mediation of the world, her work remains closely tied to the human sensibility of its understanding, feeling, living and transforming, as well as to the notions of natural resources and their potentiality.[8][9][10]
Universal Tongue is a multifaceted project that reflects on the phenomenon of dance as a universal global expression—drawing from online found footage of viral movement trends, animated videos, and traditional and social dances. The project is based on a database of 1,000 categorized dance styles created by the artist together with a team of 52 researchers, leading to the creation of an 8-channel video installation, a book publication, and a single-channel video edition. Universal Tongue highlights the friction between the universal and particular connectedness of human expression in the digital era.
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[11]. Kruithof interviewed the 10 patients about their birthday wishes and then celebrated it with and for them according to these wishes. The project resulted in an artist book publication.
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. The artist created a massive temporary arch-like sculpture at Casa Wabi, made from all the piñatas collectively created by the children.[8]
In 2022, Anouk Kruithof created Niet Meer Normaal (Eng. 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. Niet Meer Normaal was a monumental immersive artwork with scenography and a soundscape based on the diverse contributions of participants. It was created for the Kunstkerk art center in Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
Among other recognized works by Anouk Kruithof is the installation Enclosed Content Chatting Away in the Colour Invisibility (2009), an early photography series Becoming Blue (2006–2009), the art project #Evidence (2015), and the video work Ice Cry Baby (2017).
Enclosed Content Chatting Away in the Colour Invisibility consists of an installation of approximately 3,500 found books, a video loop with sound, and a photograph. The installation, resembling a wall or an illusory, colorful landscape, was constructed from 20th-century second-hand publications. Most of the books, published during the era of the German Democratic Republic and Eastern Europe, were collected and bought by the artist in Berlin. 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. It was first presented at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin and has been exhibited over 10 times at venues such as Musée des Beaux-Arts du Locle, Capitain Petzel gallery in Berlin, Museum Het Nieuwe Domein in Sittard, and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. In 2021, it was acquired by Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar for its permanent collection.
Becoming Blue features 21 portraits and three spatial stills. The project juxtaposes the blue color associated with calmness against the distorted expressions of the photographed individuals. The artwork highlights the representation of the mental state of contemporary Western European society, largely influenced by stress and the pressure to perform.[12] Three portraits from the Becoming Blue series are part of the permanent collection at SF MoMA.
#Evidence, a series of different works, such as sculpture and collages, was created while the artist lived in New York City, and was inspired by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel's book “Evidence”. 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.[13]
Ice Cry Baby is a compilation of found YouTube videos of melting ice and collapsing glaciers. It addresses the human-nature relationship in a technologically mediated world and explores the tendency towards spectacular aesthetics within a global dystopian perspective.[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. The exhibition focused on the artist's multimedia approach, presenting a collection of her photo sculptures and video collages created over a decade of artistic practice.[15]
Publications
The medium of the artist book plays an important role in Kruithof's practice. She has published 15 art books, including publications linked to her most notable works, such as Becoming Blue, Universal Tongue, and Niet Meer Normaal. She has also published standalone art books, such as A Head with Wings, Automagic and Happy Birthday to You.
In 2023, Be Like Water was published by Mousse in Milan, Italy. It is a retrospective book that gathers a large selection of Kruithof's works created over 20 years of her artistic career, spanning from 2002 to 2023.
Anouk Kruithof has received multiple awards and nominations for her publications. Her work has been recognized at the Rencontres Arles Book Award, where Universal Tongue received a nomination for Best Author in 202. Automagic was nominated for PhotoEye Best Books in 2016, and A Head with Wings was nominated for the Paris Photo Aperture Photobook Award in 2012. Additionally, The Bungalow won The Best Dutch Book Designs award from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2015, and Het Zwarte Gat / The Black Hole received the Unique Photography Book Award in 2005, among other accolades.[16][17][18][19][20]
Publications by Kruithof
2023Be Like Water, Milan: Mousse, ISBN978-88-67495-71-9; Writers: Lucia Tkáčová, Francesco Zanot, Mathilde Roman, Anouk Kruithof, Designer: Roosje Klap.
2011A Head with Wings, Minneapolis: Little Brown Mushroom, OCLC 760918291; Writer: Anouk Kruithof, Designer: Hans Seeger, Commissioned by Alec Soth.[21]
2011Lang Zal Ze Leven / Happy Birthday to You (self-published), ISBN978-90-81708-11-1; Writer, Designer: Anouk Kruithof.[10]
2006Het Zwarte Gat / The Black Hole, Rotterdam: Episode Publishers, ISBN9059730445; Poem: Leon van den Langenbergh, Design: Hans Gremmen.
Publications with contributions by Kruithof
The Riso Book: New York. San Francisco, CA: Colpa; New York, NY: Endless Editions, 2014. Kruithof with Paul Branca, David Horvitz, Matthew Palladino and Dexter Sinister. Each artist contributed to 20 pages. Fifth in The Riso Book series. Edition of 100 copies.
Printed Web #4: Public, Private, Secret.Paul Soulellis; Library of the Printed Web and International Center of Photography Museum, 2016. ISBN978-0-9840052-8-4. 40 pages. Published on the occasion of an exhibition, Public, Private, Secret, at the International Center of Photography Museum, 2016/17. Print-on-demand newsprint. Work by Kruithof, Wolfgang Plöger, Lorna Mills, Molly Soda, Travess Smalley, Angela Genusa, Eva and Franco Mattes, Elisabeth Tonnard, and Christopher Clary. With a text by Michael Connor ("Folding the Web").
Pedagogy & Other Professional Engagements
In addition to her art practice, Anouk Kruithof also writes, lectures, educates, curates, and participates in socially engaged projects.
In 2024, Anouk was a jury member and curator for the Limburg Biennale at Marres in Maastricht, the Netherlands. In 2016, she curated the 6th Annual Zine and Self-Published Photo Book Fair at CCNY in New York City.[26][27]
Between 2015 and 2018, she was a co-creator, director, and jury member of The Anamorphosis Prize, which awarded $10,000, no strings attached, to the creator of the best self-published photobook from the previous year. The prize was launched for the first time in spring 2015 and celebrated three editions.[28]
Life and work in Botopasi, Suriname
Since 2019, Anouk Kruithof has periodically lived and worked in Botopasi, a small village in the Amazon rainforest in Suriname. Connected to the local community, the artist pursues part of her artistic projects in Botopasi and engages in restorative and charity work for the village.
In 2023, she collected necessary funds through a private campaign to support the renovation of the building of the only primary school in Botopasi. The campaign raised over 15,000 euros, which allowed for the purchase and transportation of construction materials and covered the salaries of many workers, painters, and others. In 2022, she helped organize a new water pump for the village, which provides water to all houses in Botopasi from the river. In 2024, she began hosting Dutch creatives of Surinamese descent in her home for short stays of up to two weeks. This initiative was intended to deepen the understanding of Saramacca culture, the ecologies of the Amazon rainforest, and the Botopasi community. Her first guest was the painter, Iris Kensmil.[29][30]
One of her artistic projects conducted in the region is Trans-Human Nature, a series of photographic works that portray the relationship between the natural symbiosis of the rainforest and the use of high technology.
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1 2 Unwin, Rozzy (1 July 2011). "Cultural Life: Martin Parr, photographer". The Independent. Retrieved 24 December 2014. My big obsession is photobooks, and because of this interest, a book arrives nearly every day. 'Happy Birthday to You' by Anouk Kruithof really stands out.
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