Artist Talk, 25 yr NICC, SMAK ghent, 2024, by Anyuta Wiazemsky Snauwaert
I work as an artist, researcher and organiser. My practice takes shape in specific places and social contexts, that can range from tourist attractions and neighbourhoods to art institutions and self-organised initiatives. I work with the people, histories and organisational structures that shape these environments. By using sound, text, video, installation and performance, I draw on conversations, archival material and the social dynamics of collective life. I use these materials to examine how places and groups are shaped by informal agreements, power relations and unwritten rules. Humour and absurdity allow me to shift familiar perspectives and make these structures perceptible.
In Ruimten Rondom (2021), I worked with residents of Brugse Poort in Ghent to explore how a neighbourhood is experienced and represented. Through walks and audio portraits, residents became guides, photographers and reporters, producing accounts grounded in their own knowledge and experience. De Hoop (2022), developed with Laurens Mariën, Zoë Brennan and Marie Malingreau, centred on a nomadic community garden in Leuven. By tracing the ingredients of fries and mayonnaise back to their production, the project connected food cultivation and preparation to questions of land use, labour and collective care.
For CAR-PET (2023–2024), I made a travelling carpet from donated fabrics and personal stories collected in and around Aalst. The carpet serves both as an archive of individual contributions and as a shared space for gathering, hosting and organising. Its use by different people and groups allows the work to develop through the activities it accommodates. In Soup Opera (2022), developed with Renée Goethijn, I used a scripted performance to examine collective decision-making. The audience takes on the role of a fictional collective tasked with reaching a decision, encountering the negotiations and conflicting interests involved in acting together.
My research focuses on the organisational structures of collective artistic practice: how groups distribute responsibilities, negotiate authority and sustain their work, and how these arrangements compare with their stated ideals and the storeis they tell each other and the outside world. This inquiry generated About Us, a script based on interviews with collectives and artist-run organisations, that developed in a multi-screen video installation. Excerpts from these conversations appear on screens made from construction plastic, bringing different experiences of collective work into relation. The installation forms part of my doctoral research, Dialogical Landscapes: A Speculative Research on Common Ground(ing), completed at Hasselt University in 2026. The research examines self-organised art practices as forms of knowledge, with particular attention to how artistic methods can inform organisational processes and how organisation itself can become a site of artistic inquiry.
Alongside my individual practice, I work with Liesje De Laet as Te Jong & Te Laet. Collaboration and organisation are not only conditions of my work; they are also its subjects and materials. I examine the practical realities of working collectively, including the labour, negotiations and compromises that often remain implicit in accounts of shared practice.
I have contributed to Rekto Verso, COLLATERAL – Online Journal for Cross-Cultural Close Reading, Openbare Werken, 019 and Humdrum Press. My work has been presented or supported by M HKA, NW Aalst, Lugar A Dudas, KAAP, NICC, ARIA, Arteles, Extra City, VIERNULVIER, Werktank, De Koer, WP Zimmer, Kunsthal Gent and Roodkapje.
In Ruimten Rondom (2021), I worked with residents of Brugse Poort in Ghent to explore how a neighbourhood is experienced and represented. Through walks and audio portraits, residents became guides, photographers and reporters, producing accounts grounded in their own knowledge and experience. De Hoop (2022), developed with Laurens Mariën, Zoë Brennan and Marie Malingreau, centred on a nomadic community garden in Leuven. By tracing the ingredients of fries and mayonnaise back to their production, the project connected food cultivation and preparation to questions of land use, labour and collective care.
For CAR-PET (2023–2024), I made a travelling carpet from donated fabrics and personal stories collected in and around Aalst. The carpet serves both as an archive of individual contributions and as a shared space for gathering, hosting and organising. Its use by different people and groups allows the work to develop through the activities it accommodates. In Soup Opera (2022), developed with Renée Goethijn, I used a scripted performance to examine collective decision-making. The audience takes on the role of a fictional collective tasked with reaching a decision, encountering the negotiations and conflicting interests involved in acting together.
My research focuses on the organisational structures of collective artistic practice: how groups distribute responsibilities, negotiate authority and sustain their work, and how these arrangements compare with their stated ideals and the storeis they tell each other and the outside world. This inquiry generated About Us, a script based on interviews with collectives and artist-run organisations, that developed in a multi-screen video installation. Excerpts from these conversations appear on screens made from construction plastic, bringing different experiences of collective work into relation. The installation forms part of my doctoral research, Dialogical Landscapes: A Speculative Research on Common Ground(ing), completed at Hasselt University in 2026. The research examines self-organised art practices as forms of knowledge, with particular attention to how artistic methods can inform organisational processes and how organisation itself can become a site of artistic inquiry.
Alongside my individual practice, I work with Liesje De Laet as Te Jong & Te Laet. Collaboration and organisation are not only conditions of my work; they are also its subjects and materials. I examine the practical realities of working collectively, including the labour, negotiations and compromises that often remain implicit in accounts of shared practice.
I have contributed to Rekto Verso, COLLATERAL – Online Journal for Cross-Cultural Close Reading, Openbare Werken, 019 and Humdrum Press. My work has been presented or supported by M HKA, NW Aalst, Lugar A Dudas, KAAP, NICC, ARIA, Arteles, Extra City, VIERNULVIER, Werktank, De Koer, WP Zimmer, Kunsthal Gent and Roodkapje.
Contact and CV:
katinkadejonge[at]gmail.com
katinkadejonge[at]gmail.com