#MeetTheArtist Minne Kersten
During Art Rotterdam you will find the work of hundreds of artists from all over the world. In this series we highlight a number of artists who will show special work during the fair.
Minne Kersten works at the intersection of art and literature and is fascinated by the relationship between image and the written word. She completed a bachelor's degree in Image & Language at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and a residency at the prestigious De Ateliers institute in Amsterdam. She also studied art history for a year and participated in the Slow Writing Lab, a postgraduate course of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, which focuses on creative writing. The artist's literary background is expressed in large-scale installations, videos, sculptures and drawings, which are part of a fictional experiential world. In addition to her visual art practice, Kersten also writes poems and essays.
The artist's works and visual language arise from a deep-seated desire to tell stories and, in a sense, function as a support for those stories. Sometimes the sculptural sets tell their own story. Chaos, decay and deconstruction are emphasized by the frequent use of natural materials and building materials. The animal or human figures in her narratives often relate to each other in unexpected ways and sometimes there are absurdist or eerie elements. Reality and imagination seem to flow seamlessly into one another in Kersten's works.
Mourning and loss are recurring themes. The artist has done a lot of research into the symbolism and mythology surrounding mourning and loss in painting, sculpture and cinema. These are often symbolized by black birds, sometimes with mythological connotations. She recently made the video artwork 'Constant Companion' (2021) in a chapel in Hoorn, in which the leading role is reserved for a raven. Kersten films the bird close to its feathers as it explores its surroundings. Four hours of material were reduced to six minutes for this.
Kersten is also interested in the ways in which people relate to architectural structures and their immediate living environment. She analyzes spaces as psychological constructs, referring to theories such as the Stone Tape theory and place memory, which state, among other things, that certain spaces are permanently affected when emotional or traumatic events take place.
Later this year, her work will be featured in The Studio series at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, a special, small-scale solo exhibition for young artists. Kersten is also showing her work this year in The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik. In addition to the contribution from the Mondriaan Fund, she also won various other grants and grants, including from the Niemeijer Fund, the Dommering Foundation, the AFK and the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds.
During Art Rotterdam, the work of Minne Kersten can be seen in the booth of Annet Gelink Gallery as part of the video section Projections and in the Prospects exhibition of the Mondriaan Fund. For the 10th time in a row, the Mondriaan Fund presents the work of 88 starting artists here. In 2020, all artists received a financial contribution from the Mondriaan Fund to start their career.
