Paoletta Holst


Over de kunstenaar

Working as an artist, architectural researcher and writer based in Brussels, my practice operates at the intersection of different disciplines to investigate the social, historical and political dimension of architecture and the urban environment. I’m interested in the influence of formal spatial/political power structures imposed on our living environment, and in the informal counter-strategies people create to deal with them. My work is based on artistic/architectural research, and adopts different media, such as writing, mapping, photography and film, which translate into presentation methods that use forms of scenography and performative lecture to activate and contextualize exhibited images and objects.

In 2016/2017 I was a Jan van Eyck participant, and since 2018 I have been working with different people and in different formations on projects around the colonial history of the Netherlands in Indonesia. In 2019 I participated in the 900mdpl biennale in Kaliurang, Indonesia. Together with Paolo Patelli I currently work on an archival research project rethinking the ‘logic’ of the Tillema Collections, collaborating with Research Center for Material Culture (fellowship), and generously supported by Creative Industries Fund in The Netherlands. Since March 2022 I am a PhD researcher at the University of Ghent, department of Architecture and Urban Planning, focussing on colonial housing politics and domestic cultures in the former Dutch East Indies, and since September 2022 I am an associated researcher at the a.pass Research Center in Brussels.

With Rob Ritzen I founded That Might Be Right an artistic and socially engaged organization dedicated to researching, developing and supporting alternatives to the present. From 2017 till 2021 I have been teaching history and theory of architecture and urbanism at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and from 2018 till 2021, I worked as text and image editor for the online platform Archined.

Film Installatiekunst Mixed media
Menyunting Arsip/Editing the Archive, Resequencing the Tillema Collection. Experimental documentary film project produced by Paoletta Holst and Paolo Patelli. Exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam 2022 (image: Simaa Al-saig)
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