Jolanda Jansen

Video Art and Performance Art

Jolanda Jansen (NL) graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2005) followed by post graduate studies at the Dutch Art Institute in Enschede (2007). She is founder and organizer of Performance Site P.S.; performance art events in The Hague. In her carefully constructed but direct performances and video installations, Jolanda submits her body to various transformations, or rather deformations, to engage with the possibility of self-reinvention and release from cultural determinations. She strives to disorganize and transform her own controlled body and engage with issues of voyeurism and gender power relations. Her approach to performance art is finding a balance between the creative process of studying material in relation to the body in movement, this opposite testing the limits of the body and its uncontrolled stage. In her latest performance series Paper Study's #, the basic material paper, that refers to our mind, is in contrast with the intuitive body. In this way she creates poetic, out of place / surreal and sometimes disturbing images. “Paper doesn’t interest me because of what it is, but more of what it is not. Some say paper is a blank sheet, something that could become something new, or even a new beginning. You can’t erase your features, or your background. A body is harder to transform than paper, that’s why I like to use paper. It can be strong and fragile like a feather. It has the promise of meaning. I prefer to bring it back to its basic nature, to use it as a natural material, something that was alive, like coming from the wood of a majestic tree. It’s the same in how I like to go back to what it is to be human- our cravings, shame, fear, anger etc, but we usually don’t reveal so much.” In 2009, Jansen was selected to participate in the Mentoring Program for emerging artists and curators of Cultuur en Ondernemen where she worked with as mentor, the artist Ulay. Her video and performance work has been featured internationally among others at Gasometer Oberhausen (Germany), Nan- Hai Gallery (Taipei), Residency Unlimited New York (USA), Witzenhausen Gallery New York (USA), Scope Basel (Switzerland), Cel 32, Berlin (Germany) Arnolfini, Bristol (UK), CREATurE Live Art Festival (Lithuania), NordArt (Germany), Warsaw International Performance Art Weekend (Poland), Solyanka Gallery Moscow (Russia), PAO Performance Art Oslo (Norway), Performance Crossings (Czech Republic), Venice Performance art week (Italy).