Saskia Noor van Imhoff’s oeuvre examines systems, hierarchical structures, and ideas about collecting. While addressing the underlying dynamics that lead to decisions about what we keep for the future, and what we decide to dispose of, she questions the idea of a collection as a knowledge system and a mechanism that selects, differentiates, and classifies. She approaches these structures using a variety of media such as photography, sculpture and architecture, which merge into a whole in her installations. Recently she expanded her focus to a historic rural farmland in the Dutch countryside that she defines as an ’organic-collection’; the plot can be seen as a repository of knowledge, expression of its past and resource for understanding ourselves today. In her works components from the land are cultivated, processed and put together. By rethinking, re-contextualising and reclaiming a site new relationships are born, and new concepts of nature develop in order to rethink the land and its use, value, and legacy.
Together with designer Arnout Meijer, Van Imhoff is the co-founder of REST, an artistic research foundation.
Saskia Noor van Imhoff (b. 1982 in Mission, CA) lives and works in Amsterdam and Mirns (NL). Van Imhoff was awarded the 2017 ABN Amro ArtPrize (NL), the 2012 Walter Tielmann Prize for Book Design (DE) and the 2008 Gerrit Rietveld Academie Prize (NL).
Van Imhoff has had exhibitions at various venues including: Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (NL); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL); AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); the Arnulf Rainer Museum, Baden (AT); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (NL); Frans Halsmuseum De Hallen, Haarlem (NL); the 11th Gwangju Biennial (KR); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (FR); Frans Hals Museum|DeHallen, Haarlem (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); De Appel, Amsterdam (NL) and the Moscow Biennial (RU).
Van Imhoff’s work is included in the collections of ABN Amro Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); AMC Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); THE EKARD COLLECTION; Huize Frankendael, Amsterdam (NL); ING Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum, Leiden (NL); De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (NL); Rabo Art Collection, Utrecht (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); Textiel Museum, Tilburg (NL); Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke (BE) and Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL), among many other public and private collections.