Portrait Marjolijn Dijkman, photo Ewen Leroux, NOVA Biennale, Paris, FR (2021)
Marjolijn Dijkman is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice operates at the intersection of culture, science, and speculative fiction. Working across film, photography, sculpture, and installation, her practice focuses on rapidly changing environments and their human and nonhuman interdependencies. She develops multiyear, process-based projects that mobilize archival research, fieldwork, and experimentation, resulting in artworks, exhibitions, publications, and discursive events.
By moving between the factual and the fictional, she uncovers hidden stories and overlooked connections among power, knowledge, and environmental transformation, revealing the biases embedded in scientific and cultural myths. Her works invite audiences into direct experiences that deepen empathetic relationships with their surroundings, proposing alternative perspectives on the connections between human narratives and the broader material, environmental, and interspecies networks.
Between the Lines (2021–2025), centred on the climate crisis unfolding in the WWI-scarred forests of the Zone Rouge in northeastern France, exemplifies this approach by tracing the long, entangled aftermath of human conflict and ecological destruction across time. Her current project, Turbid Tides (2023–ongoing), explores the parallel between rising siltation in the Ems-Dollard estuary and the expanding influence of computational thinking, questioning established boundaries between sentience, intelligence, and the material world.
Her process is inherently collaborative, involving scientists, technicians, and artisans. Over the past two decades, Dijkman has engaged with fields ranging from physics and astronomy to ecology and anthropology, treating them as generative sites for artistic research while exposing the exclusions within dominant scientific histories and foregrounding sidelined ways of knowing.
____
Marjolijn Dijkman (*1978, NL) lives and works in Brussels (BE) & Lahaymeix (FR).
She graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2001 and from the MFA program at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2003. She was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2006 – 2007. She is a Ph.D. researcher at LUCA – School of Arts, Brussels & KU Leuven (2023-2027).
In 2005, she founded Enough Room for Space (ERforS) with Maarten Vanden Eynde, a collaborative platform for artistic research that fosters interdisciplinary dialogues on social and ecological transformation. She was part of On-Trade-Off, a transnational artist-led project (2018–2024) on lithium extraction in the DRC.
She’s an artist-in-residence at the EU Horizon project WaterLANDS (2023-2026), an affiliated artist at JUST ART: Creating Common Grounds for Climate Justice Through Artistic Research (2026-2031), and a section editor of Commodity Frontiers Journal since 2020.
____
Contact
Studio & Enough Room for Space
Sterstraat 10 Rue de l’Etoile
1620 Drogenbos, Belgium
studio.marjolijndijkman@protonmail.com
+32 485 646 146
Social media: Bluesky / Instagram/ Linkedin
____
Solo Exhibitions (selection)
Between the Lines, Kunstverein Göttingen, DE (2025); Between the Lines, V2_Lab for Unstable Media & O. Festival, Rotterdam, NL (2024); Depth of Discharge, Turku Art Museum, Turku, FI (2022); Shifting Axis, Edith Russ Haus, Oldenburg, DE (2021); Electrify Everything, NOME, Berlin, DE (2021); Earthing Discharge, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, US (2020); Club Solo & BredaPhoto, Breda, NL (2020); Reclaiming Vision, HIAP & Helsinki Festival, FI (2019); Liquid Properties, OSL Contemporary, Oslo, NO (2019); Navigating Polarities, NOME, Berlin, DE (2018); Liquid Properties, Munchmuseet on the Move, Munch Museum, Oslo, NO, (2018); That What Makes Us Human, Onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL (2016); LUNÄ, fig.-2, ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), London, UK (2015); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, West Space, Melbourne, AU (2015); History Rising, Wisbech Museum, Wisbech / Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery & Outpost, Norwich, UK (2013-2014); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2011); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Spike Island, Bristol, UK (2011); Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, MATRIX 234, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, USA (2010), Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Bloomberg SPACE, London, UK (2009)
International Biennales
Plurivers & Contingence, 4th Biennale NOVA XX, Paris, FR (2024); Pre-Biennale Manifesta 15, with On-Trade-Off, Barcelona, ES (2023); The Night, 3rd Chroniques Biennale, Marseille, FR (2022); Spoiled Waters Spilled, Les Parallèles du Sud, Manifesta 13, Marseille, FR (2020); Future Genealogies, 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, DRC (2019); Ecology – lost, found, continued, 4th Screen City Biennale, Stavanger, NO (2019); Coltan as Cotton, Contour Biennale 9, Mechelen, BE (2019); SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU (2018); Why Not Ask Again?, 11th Shanghai Biennale, CN (2016); On Geometry and Speculation, Higher Atlas, 4th Marrakech Biennial, MO (2012); Screaming and Hearing, 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, BR (2009); ‘Still life, Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change’, 8th Sharjah Biennale, UAE (2007)
Group Exhibitions (selection)
Botanizing the Asphalt, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, AT (2025); Six Samples of Catastrophe, Art Pavilion, Zagreb, HR (2025); The Atlantic Ocean, Henie Onstad Kunstcenter, Oslo, NO (2024); Power Up, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, Mulhouse, FR (2024); Charging Myths, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, NL (2023); Terra Libera, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, NL (2023); Charging Myths, Z33, Hasselt, BE (2022); Emotions are Oceans, CCA RADIUS, Delft, NL (2022); AQUARIA, MAAT, Lisbon, PT (2021); Reclaiming Places, La Loge, Brussels, BE (2021); The Extended Mind, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, UK (2019); The Overview Effect, BOZAR, Brussels, BE (2019); Working for the Commons, Casco Art Institute, Utrecht, NL (2017); The Act Of Magic, Artefact 2017, Leuven, BE (2017); Wanderlust, De Hallen, Haarlem, NL (2016); Third Nature, CCS Bard/Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, USA (2016); Global Imaginations, Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, NL (2015); Fact & Fiction, Lehnbachhaus, Munich, DE (2015); Out There, Netherlands Photo Museum, Rotterdam, NL (2015); El Theatro del Mundo, Museo Tamayo Art Contemporáneo, Mexico City, MX (2014); Ja Natuurlijk, Gemeente Museum, The Hague, NL (2013); Portscapes, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, NL (2010); The History of the Future, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, AT (2010); Now JumP, Nam June Paik Museum, Yongin-si, KR (2008); The Order of Things, MuHKA, Antwerp, BE (2008)
Residencies (selection)
WaterLANDS, Wageningen University & Ems-Dollard Estuary, NL (2023 – 2026); Field_Notes, Bioart Society, Sápmi, FI (2025); Pre-Biennale Manifesta 15, with On-Trade-Off, Barcelona, ES (2023); Q-O2, Brussels, with Pom Bouvier b., BE (2022); Jester, Genk, BE (2021); HIAP, Helsinki, FI (2019); CCS Bard / Hessel Museum, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, US (2017 & 2018); Land Art Contemporary (LAC), Drenthe, NL (2015); Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, UK (2012); GEO Air, Tbilisi, GE (2011); CEAC / Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, CN (2008); LACE, Los Angeles, US (2008)
Initiated and Co-Initiated projects:
On-Trade-Off, Enough Room for Space, BE & Picha, Lubumbashi, DRC (2018-2024); Uncertainty Scenarios, w/ Amelie Bouvier, Enough Room for Space, BE (2015 – 2022); Performing Objects, w/ Kristof Van Gestel, Enough Room for Space, BE (2014 – 2022); Present Perfect, w/ Annette Schemmel, Enough Room for Space, BE / Diartgonale, Douala, CM (2009 – 2017); The Invisible Hand, B-OPEN / Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen, NO (2012); History Rising, w/ Jes Fernie, East Anglia, UK (2011-2025); Smooth Structures, w/ Maarten Vanden Eynde, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, NL (2010); Stardust in a Nutshell, w/ Annette Schemmel, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, DE (2010); Corrillos, w/ David Maroto, Tent. Rotterdam, NL (2008 – 2009); Formatting Utopia, w/ Annette Schemmel, Mundaneum, Mons, BE (2008); Localisms, Museum de Paviljoens, Almere, NL (2008); Please, Excuse our Appearance, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2007); Thinking about!, iStrike and ERforS, Rotterdam, NL (2007); The ANNEX, Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, NL (2007); Georgia Here We Come!, ERforS / Expodium / GEO-Air, NAC, Tbilisi, GE (2006); Enough Room For Space II, Filiale, Basel, CH (2005); Basis, w/ Wouter Osterholt, Artis, ’s Hertogenbosch, NL (2005); The Project Space, w/ Wouter Osterholt, Rotterdam, NL (2003-2004)