For the Apprentice Master  program by Kunstpodium T, Eva van Ooijen (me), Ivo van den Baar, Karma Hamed, Nicole Driessens, Sixin Zeng and Wout Peeters decided to go looking for a collective artist identity that they named ULRIXA.   

One step from shame:

For this exhibition, I contemplated ULRIXA’s oeuvre. When looking at established artists, their body of work always seems organized and logical. If there are any twists and turns, there is an explanation. Thinking back on the 20 years of my career and trying to find a red thread through it, the works that kept popping up into my head were the ones that I was ashamed of.

I decided to make a new work for this exhibition using one of these unsatisfactory pieces and asked all other participating artists to share one piece of work that they were not happy with/ashamed of.
I approached these works as an archive, trying to find a new connection to them by intuitively molding them into new works. With the time pressure of making these works, the possibility of shame and failure were always lurking in my mind.

Is it art yet?

In this installation, I not only challenge the artist oeuvre but also the exhibition format. Because what is an exhibition anyway? A short moment in time, of which only pictures will be left. I decided to get ahead of that, the works already in a storage unit, only part of them visible. The documentation of the exhibition is also on show.

Pictures: Margo van de Pas

This work is about Loes, an artist who spent her life in obscurity.

In 2022, Eva van Ooijen came into possession of a number of exhibition maquettes. Curator Mindy Lamers made these maquettes in 2017 in preparation for a retrospective exhibition about the forgotten female artist Loes at the Stedelijk Museum Enschede. Despite the museum's interest in hosting an exhibition about Loes, Lamers never managed to execute her plans. She was unable to capture the essence of Loes works, which are elusive due to their variety in styles and mediums. The small scale models in these maquettes are all that remain of Loes' multifaceted oeuvre.

Eva uses her graduationshow as a testing ground in the hopes of getting Loes acknowledged by the art world.
Graduation show, Master Artistic Research, KABK, 2022.
Read the KABK Graduation Exhibition review by Lena Tijen for MetropolisM.

Eva is in the process of recreating Loes artworks that are reduced to stamp-sized photographs. Although a copy seems the highest achievable, inevitably you end up with a translation or interpretation of the original. Photography preserves and at the same time changes the qualities of what it captures.  This makes the original physical properties of the works difficult to trace. By making her own interpretations she does not only give Loes a voice, but in the gaps there is room for her own artistry.

The interpretations of Loes' works are a metaphor for what happens when you try to rewrite (art) history and retrospectively place women back into it. You cannot reclaim what is not documented: you can only try to fill in the gaps as best you can within a selective art historical canon.

Loes as a construct represents a large group of women artists who, in a male-dominated art world, have never been heard or seen.

You can follow the proces here: MIRO 

(pictures ©Gert Jan van Rooij)

Email Exchange between Mindy Lamers and Eva van Ooijen:

Attachement to Mindy’s email: 

A Horse Dressed Up Like A Zebra contains research for 4 episodes of the podcast
"Dear Dr. A." in which investigative journalist Andreas Nimmerdor tells the story of
a fraudulent scientist, Dr. A., who claims to have made an archaeological finding
in the Amazon region. 

Nimmerdor's proposal leans heavily on an archive that was donated to him by the artist Eva van Ooijen.
In return, she asks him to answer her question:
How to become a fraud?

This publication leads you through a jungle of stories, cases of fraud
scientific and non-scientific. All in an attempt to answer Eva's question. And at the same time trying to find out why someone like her wants to know how to do so.

Made into a book by Eva van Ooijen and presented as her Master thesis. 

Designed by:
Bureau Merkwaardig
Anouk de l’Ecluse & Daphne de Vries 
Thesis Supervisor:
Jasper Coppes 

You can find a PDF of the book here: A Horse Dressed Up Like A Zebra
Interested in a physical copy? Sent me an email: info@evavanooijen.nl

Installation shot: Dear Dr. A. Part of the: In Pending Waters, Yearly Master Artistic Research show 2021.


Dear Dr. A,
I am looking for you.
This is what I know about you so far: Watch video. 

Power Pose as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary:
a way of standing or sitting that is intended to make you look and feel powerful and confident.

- A classic power pose used by humans and chimps alike is to spread your arms wide to appear more powerful.
- A lot of the TED talk was about how to strike a power pose.

Video: 2021 Watch: Power-Pose