"Dijkmans practice development over the last ten years, can be defined as Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind. The decoding of the coloniser’s mindset requires identifying the evolution of the Enlightenment into contemporary practices, despite the prevailing opinion among many scholars that the fall of the Nazi regime ended the Enlightenment project and the colonial reflex." from Decoding the Coloniser’s Mind by Galit Eilat (2020)


Artist Statement

I am a research-based and multi-disciplinary artist using film, photography, sculpture, and installation. My practice focuses on the points where culture intersects with other fields of inquiry. The works themselves are speculative, partly based on facts and research but often brought into the realm of the imagination. I work on multiyear process-based research projects that resulting in various works, discursive events, exhibitions, and publications embodying different parts of a larger story.

My work is concerned with residues of enlightenment ideology, manifestations of collective memory, and blind spots of representation. My working method interweaves and investigates collective narratives concerning the commons, broadly construed. My practice explores ideas underpinning the categorical fields of scientific research and museology and analyses the mainstream propagation of images, cultural norms, and the exploitation of natural resources.

I have an intuitive and artistic approach and aim to reveal hidden stories and relations that might be overlooked. I involve audiences in direct experiences that can enhance emphatic relationships with their surroundings. The production process is often an experimental and innovative creation process involving other scientists, technicians, and artisans. For the past two decades, I have realised projects on various types of knowledge production, including social history museums, scientific fields (e.g. astronomy, macro-biology, electricity), and forms of the collective imagination.


Enough Room for Space

In 2005 I founded Enough Room for Space (ERforS) together with Maarten Vanden EyndeEnough Room for Space is an interdependent art organisation that initiates experimental research projects and exhibitions. ERforS tends to act as freely as possible, always placing the context and the idea before the medium, challenging the barriers between different disciplines (artistic, scientific or activist).

Dialogue is central to the way ERforS initiates and develops projects. Our aim is to closely relate both to the practices and interests of the artists involved as well as the different contexts where we exhibit or produce new works. We take time to develop ideas parallel to each other, to experiment and exchange ideas relating to common fields of interest and explore adjacent fields of knowledge. For this reason we mostly work on long-term projects, that take shape and find direction by the various input and energy of the different partners and participants.


Marjolijn Dijkman (1978, NL) lives and works in Brussels (BE) & Saint-Mihiel (FR), graduated from the free media department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2001, the MFA Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2003 and was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2006 - 2007.


Supported by Mondriaan Fund, Amsterdam, NL 

Image above: Marjolijn Dijkman, 2009

Solo Exhibitions (selection): Depth of Discharge, Turku Art Museum, Turku, FI (2022); Shifting Axis, Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, DE (2021); Electrify Everything, NOME, Berlin, DE (2021); Earthing Discharge, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, US (2020); Club Solo & BredaPhoto, Breda, NL (2020); Reclaiming Vision, HIAP & Helsinki Festival, FI (2019); Liquid Properties, OSL Contemporary, Oslo, NO (2019); Navigating Polarities, NOME, Berlin, DE (2018); Liquid Properties, Munchmuseet on the Move, Munch Museum, Oslo, NO, (2018); That What Makes Us Human, Onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL (2016); LUNÄ, fig.-2, ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London, UK (2015); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, West Space, Melbourne, AU (2015); History Rising, Wisbech Museum, Wisbech / Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery & Outpost, Norwich, UK (2013-2014); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2011); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2011); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, MATRIX 234, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, USA (2010), Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Bloomberg SPACE, London, UK (2009)

Group Exhibitions (selection): The Night, 3rd Chroniques Biennale, Marseille, FR (2022); Charging Myths, Z33, Hasselt, BE (2022); Emotions are Oceans, CCA RADIUS, Delft, NL (2022); AQUARIA, MAAT, Lisbon, PT (2021); Reclaiming Places, La Loge, Brussels, BE (2021); Spoiled Waters Spilled, Les Parallèles du Sud, Manifesta 13, Marseille, FR (2020); Future Genealogies, 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, DRC (2019); Ecology - lost, found, continued, 4th Screen City Biennale, Stavanger, NO (2019); Coltan as Cotton, Contour Biennale 9, Mechelen, BE (2019); The Extended Mind, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2019); The Overview Effect, BOZAR, Brussels, BE (2019); SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU (2018); Working for the Commons, Casco Art Institute, Utrecht, NL (2017); The Act Of Magic, Artefact 2017, Leuven, BE (2017); Why Not Ask Again?, 11th Shanghai Biennale, CN (2016); Wanderlust, De Hallen, Haarlem, NL (2016); Third Nature, CCS Bard/Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, USA (2016); Global Imaginations, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, NL (2015); Fact & Fiction, Lehnbachhaus, Munich, DE (2015); Out There, Netherlands Photo Museum, Rotterdam, NL (2015); El Theatro del Mundo, Museo Tamayo Art Contemporáneo, Mexico City, MX (2014); Ja Natuurlijk, Gemeente Museum, The Hague, NL (2013); On Geometry and Speculation, Higher Atlas, 4th Marrakech Biennial, MO (2012); Portscapes, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, NL (2010); Screaming and Hearing, 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, BR (2009); Now JumP, Nam June Paik Museum, Yongin-si, KR (2008); The Order of Things, MuHKA, Antwerp, BE (2008); 'Still life, Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change', 8th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2007)