My name is Laurien Versteegh. I have studied “Scenography” at Minerva, school of art in Groningen. For my graduation project I made the video installation “I am”. With this installation I won the Academy Minerva Prize for design and spacial design 2006.
In September 2006 I started my Masters “ Scenography” at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, in London. Besides the fantastic international mix or students at Saint Martins, the high light was the overseas placement in Krakau, Poland. During these 3 months my fellow students and I developed a performance called “ A funeral for Don Quixote”. In September 2007 I completed my Masters study at CSM.
After returning to The Netherlands in March 2009, I have worked in Amsterdam as an arts teacher at a high school for 10 years. During this period I always continued to produce my own work. I made silk screen prints and I started with ceramics in 2016. From the first moment I loved working with clay. And I have never stopped!
In 2019 I moved from Amsterdam to Driebergen, a small village near Utrecht. I stopped working as an arts teacher to focus completely on making my art as a visual artist but the Corona crisis changed everything: being stuck at home with three young children, I couldn’t get anything done.
I followed the news about the Corona virus with great interest. In the beginning it felt like something that happened far away, in China. Dreadful, but due to the fact that China is thousands of miles away, it felt quite abstract. But like a massive wave it hit Europe too. I concluded that the whole world was in it together: everybody is affected by this virus in one way or another. I imagined that the newspapers worldwide, would most likely be dominated by news about the Corona virus. This is when I started; “The Future Front Pages Project”, an international art collaboration project. (link to project)
At this moment we are in the middle of the second lock down and I have picked up making my own work again.