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 that selects, differentiates, and classifies. She works with institutional depots, personal selections or unintentional 'organic collections' found outdoors in public spaces, wastelands and landscapes, where nature and culture are closely entangled. These structures are approached using a variety of media such as sculpture, photography and architecture, which merge into a whole in her installations.
Recently Van Imhoff worked on a historic rural farmland in the Dutch countryside, from which she derives the idea of a plot as a repository of knowledge, an expression of its past and a resource for understanding ourselves today. Components from this and other landscapes are cultivated, processed and put together in her work, related to ‘grafting’ — a botanical technique to propagate and renew plants — referencing progress and transformation. By rethinking, re-contextualising and reclaiming mechanisms of collections, new perspectives develop in order to rethink their use, value, and legacy.
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) and nominated for the 2017 Prix de Rome (NL). Together with designer Arnout Meijer, Van Imhoff is the co-founder of REST, an artistic research foundation.
Van Imhoff has had exhibitions at various venues including: AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); the 11th Gwangju Biennial (KR); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (FR); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL); De Appel, Amsterdam (NL); the Arnulf Rainer Museum, Baden (AT); Frans Halsmuseum De Hallen, Haarlem (NL); Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (NL); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (NL); the Moscow Biennial (RU); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL).
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); De Nederlandsche Bank, Amsterdam (NL); THE EKARD COLLECTION; Huize Frankendael, Amsterdam (NL); ING Art Collection, Amsterdam (NL); Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum, Leiden (NL); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar (NL); Rabo Art Collection, Utrecht (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); Textiel Museum, Tilburg (NL); Verbeke Foundation, Kemzeke (BE), among many other public and private collections.