Maike Hemmers

Maike Hemmers (1987, Germany) is an artist based in Rotterdam. Her recent projects attempt to work with and make sense of the idea that the rope binds in unison. She engages with play, emotions, and relationships in collaborative material processes. Her primary mediums are colorful, fuzzy, and abstract drawings, textile sculptures, and public activations, with the different strands often coming together in the form of temporary installations. Maike's practice is fundamentally shaped by a feminist critique of architecture and a queer and soft resistance: a rethinking of dominant structures through layers of affective material relations and the interconnected net of our basic collectivity. She researches and uses somatic practices, such as Processwork, to understand and depict how affects and relationships move through and between us. This has extended into foraging for natural pigments as a social and connective practice with the more-than-human, exploring the transformation of color as a local material. Recently, Maike has focused on play as a queer disorientation of our normalized and 'straight' behavior in space. Through playfullness, we connect curiously, lean on the guidance of our gut feelings and alter-egos, and move in dynamic relationships with others. Maike received her MFA in 2017 at the Dutch Art Institute (NL). Her work has been shown at Kunstinstituut Melly (NL), Tent (NL), Milieu (CH), Firstdraft (AUS), among many others. In 2023, she was nominated for the Dolf Henkes Prize. Some of Hemmers' writing can be found online at Nero Editions and The Site Magazine. Her practice has been funded by Stimuleringfonds, Prins Bernhard Fonds, Cbk Rotterdam, among others, and she is structurally supported by Mondriaan Fonds.