Marijke van Warmerdam

The magic and wonder of everyday life is accentuated—and celebrated—in the work of Dutch artist Marijke van Warmerdam. Her simple subjects range from natural ephemera, like flowers, leaves, and feathers to a girl performing a handstand. In van Warmerdam’s hands, these minutiae exude a quiet beauty, and are portrayed in various mediums, including abstract photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Van Warmerdam is perhaps best known for her short films, in which, for example, the looped imagery of falling milk drops elude traditional narrative structure, achieving instead for an associative, hypnotic effect. 

Van Warmerdam first gained global acclaim for her contribution to the 1995 Venice Biennale. Since then, she has been the subject of numerous solo shows, most notably at the Musée Art Contemporain in Marseille, the Museum Boijman van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, and Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. She has also exhibited at the Sydney, Berlin, and Gwangju Biennials, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, the DIA Art Foundation in New York, and the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, among others.