Rachel de Joode, born in 1979 in Amersfoort (NL), studied time-based Arts
at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. She currently lives and works
in Berlin.
Rachel de Joode creates installations, sculptures, photographs and performances. Her work addresses an object’s ability to transfer and measure what Joode calls "our humanness". She dedicates her practice to the questions “Why are we here?” and “What does it mean to be human today?” By addressing these questions, de Joode creates symbols through topics of study, including semiotics of commodities, information technologies and human nature.
A keen observer of social behavior and the poetry of the everyday, de Joode’s oeuvre reveal processes of deconstruction and abstraction of banal paraphernalia and conditions. Her material representations explore the realm of social and cultural structures. Through re-assembling and reconstructing, de Joode creates physical representations of abstract and immaterial entities like Information or the Internet and the Human Condition.
De Joode investigates the relationship between man and objects in contemporary culture with a playful anthropological rigor.
De Joode is founder and art-director of online magazine
Meta Magazine and founder
and curator of the art auction house de Joode & Kamutzki.
SCHOOL
Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, NL
Art Academie ST’Joost, Breda, NL
GRANTS, AWARDS
Funding from the Royal Dutch Embassy of Estonia for the solo-show
Light Trapped in Matter
Stiftung Culturia Berlin, grant for free studio space in Berlin Mitte
Gruner+Jahr Publishers, 90 Jahre Bauhaus Award—3rd prize for the
series Primary Trichromatic Color Visions, 2009
Fonds BKVB (The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design
and Architecture), Starterstipendium, 2002/2003
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2012
DOVBLE TROVBLE groupexhibition curated by It's Our Playground at The Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) Glasgow.
2011
Exhibition of the series Altars during the groupshow " La quema del Diablo ( The burning of the Devil ) " at Proyectos Ultravioleta in Guatemala City
Seeing The Future a skype performance at Future Gallery, Berlin
The Seven Acts Of Mercy 500 free givaway posters during The Culture Club by Picnic Magazine at Art Basel Miami 2011 in Miami, USA
Light Trapped in Matter solo show at City Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia
Rat Piss Virus Give It To Me groupshow at Yautepec Gallery - curated by Gerardo Contreras (Preteen Gallery), Mexico
BONE performance and exhibition at LEAP Berlin
2010
Das Ding exhibition of the installation Matter and Light and Workshop
in GAS Station Berlin
PHASE II (SKELETON) performance, in collaboration with Donna Huanca
at Galerie Birgit Ostermeier, Berlin
Conjunction on-site installation with sound and performance, in
collaboration with Donna Huanca in HBC, Berlin
Slab in Temporaray Space, grouphow, exhibition of A Chicken Taped To
A Keyboard Makes Me Sad & I Love Terra Preta, Houston TX, USA
Giant Bowl On Monuments Day, exhibition in Oslo of the giant
inflatable sculpture A Peanut, Half a Horse, a Chicken Foot a
Burning Cigarette and a Black Hole, Oslo, Norway
2009
Ten Years Anniversary Art Exhibition, The Chinese European Art Center,
Xiamen, China
Guerilla exhibition organized by Pluslisa Utrecht showing of
The Residue of those Celestial Objects Bound to our Sun by Gravity, NL
Man & Object, AB-Project Gallery, exhibition of The Legends of
Stick-On Faux Marble and Eternal Grey Dream and Size Matters
SELECTED BOOK PUBLICATIONS
Doppelganger: Images of the Human Being Gestalten Verlag, January 2011
Hair’em Scare’em Gestalten Verlag, October 2009
Tangible Gestalten Verlag, January 2009
Sideways Art Book, Gestalten Verlag, March 2008
Superstar Book—an artistic approach of documenting and explaining what
is known as culture Lodown, 2007
LECTURES AND OTHER PROJECTS
Lecture at Ptarmigan Artspace in Tallinn, 2011
Founder and curator of auctionhouse de Joode & Kamutzki, 2011 - till now
Guest lecture at Bauhaus Institut Weimar, Germany, 2010
Founder and art-director of online magazine Meta Magazine, 2009 - till now
Commercial fashion & product photographer - Studio Rachel de Joode , 2004 - till now