Marjolijn Dijkman is a research-based, multidisciplinary artist who works with film, photography, sculpture, and installation. Her practice explores the intersection of culture and other fields of inquiry, strongly focusing on the rapidly changing environment and its human and nonhuman interdependencies. By combining field research with speculative imagination, she creates works that emerge from multiyear, process-based research projects. These projects result in artworks, exhibitions, publications, and discursive events.
Dijkman develops works that aspire to capture the complexity of the historical entanglements relating to the contexts of the sites where she works, forge unforeseen connections, foster identification, and incite action. She aims to uncover hidden stories and overlooked connections between power, knowledge, and environmental transformations with an intuitive and artistic approach. Her work addresses residues of enlightenment ideology, manifestations of collective imagination, and blind spots of representation.
Her works invite audiences to engage in direct experiences that enhance empathetic relationships with their surroundings. They propose alternative perspectives on the intricate connections between human narratives and the broader material, environmental, and interspecies networks.
The research and production process is often experimental and collaborative, involving scientists, technicians, and artisans. Over the past two decades, Dijkman has developed projects concerning various forms of knowledge production, including scientific disciplines such as physics, electricity, astronomy, magnetism, macro-biology, ecology, and anthropology.
“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)
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Marjolijn Dijkman (*1978, NL) lives and works in Brussels (BE) & Lahaymeix (FR).
She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2001 and the MFA Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2003. She was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2006 – 2007. She is a Ph.D. researcher at LUCA—School of Arts Brussels / Leuven University, supervised by Wendy Morris and Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou (2023-2027).
In 2005, she founded Enough Room for Space (ERforS) with Maarten Vanden Eynde. Enough Room for Space is an interdependent art organization that initiates experimental collaborative research projects and tends to act as freely as possible, challenging the barriers between disciplines (artistic, scientific, or activist). She was part of On-Trade-Off, a transnational artist-led project (2018–2024) on lithium extraction in the DRC.
She’s an artist in residence at the EU Horizon 2020 project WaterLANDS (2023-2026) and a section editor of Commodity Frontiers Journal.
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Contact
Studio & Enough Room for Space
Sterstraat 10 Rue de l’Etoile
1620 Drogenbos, Belgium
studio.marjolijndijkman@protonmail.com
+32 485 646 146
Social media: Bluesky & Mastadon / Instagram / Linkedin
Gallery
NOME
Potsdamer str. 72
10785 Berlin, Germany
Portrait Marjolijn Dijkman, photo Ewen Leroux, NOVA Biennale, Paris, FR (2021)
Solo Exhibitions (selection)
Between the Lines, V2_Lab for Unstable Media & O. Festival, Rotterdam, NL (2024); Déjà Vu, Vent des forêts, FR (2023); 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)
International Biennales
Plurivers & Contingence, 4th Biennale NOVA XX, Paris, FR (2024); The Night, 3rd Chroniques Biennale, Marseille, FR (2022); 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); SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU (2018); Why Not Ask Again?, 11th Shanghai Biennale, CN (2016); On Geometry and Speculation, Higher Atlas, 4th Marrakech Biennial, MO (2012); Screaming and Hearing, 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, BR (2009); ‘Still life, Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change’, 8th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2007)
Group Exhibitions (selection)
The Atlantic Ocean, Henie Onstad Kunstcenter, Oslo, NO (2024); Power Up, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse, FR (2024); Charging Myths, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, NL (2023); Terra Libera, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, NL (2023); 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); The Extended Mind, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2019); The Overview Effect, BOZAR, Brussels, BE (2019); Working for the Commons, Casco Art Institute, Utrecht, NL (2017); The Act Of Magic, Artefact 2017, Leuven, BE (2017); 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); Portscapes, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, NL (2010); Now JumP, Nam June Paik Museum, Yongin-si, KR (2008); The Order of Things, MuHKA, Antwerp, BE (2008)
Residencies (Selection)
WaterLANDS, Wageningen University & Ems-Dollard, NL (2023 – 2026); Pre-Biennale Manifesta 15, with On-Trade-Off, Barcelona, ES (2023); Q-O2, Brussels, with Pom Bouvier b., BE (2022); Jester, Genk, BE (2021); HIAP, Helsinki, FI (2019); CCS Bard / Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, US (2017 & 2018); Land Art Contemporary (LAC), Drenthe, NL (2015); Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2012); GEO Air, Tbilisi, GE (2011); CEAC / Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, CN (2008); LACE, Los Angeles, US (2008)
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
CV Marjolijn Dijkman, 2024