As I began to document the world around me, I became fascinated by the truth “promised” by the technology of photography and its ability to preserve a moment within reality. Through image making I question that reality and attempt to create a world free from the constraints of time and conventional narrative. This world exists through the arrangement and creation of images. It’s a place that exists - because they have been photographed - and at the same time non-existing, because they have been photographed. I explore this inbetween when it is simultaneously “no longer” and “not yet.”
Throughout the work I combine the familiarity of the everyday with the tactile and experimental nature of historic photographic processes. Contrast in subject matter, method, and materiality allows me to more accurately intervene between memory and image. Utilizing different and found materials, I’m able to emphasize the fragility of memories and their intangibility within a photograph.
I want a world to exist that cannot always be defined, but that makes me long for that intangible place.
Esmee van Zeeventer (Rotterdam, NL 1997) graduated the bachelor of Fine Arts at the AKI Artez Enschede in 2021 and BA Creative Media at Saxion 2022. Esmee seems to operate as an investigator of her own universe, reflecting on her personal history, investigating and showing contemporary possibilities on everyday motives and matters while pondering on questions of the world. She extracts images from the world around her to visualize life’s eternal subjects as memories, love, fear and loneliness.
selected exhibitions
upcoming
2025 solo galerie Pouloeuff, Naarden NL
2025 group The New Current, Rotterdam, NL
2025 group De Ruimte, Deventer, NL
2024 group zonnebloemen voor Van Gogh, Vincent van GoghHuis, Zundert, NL
2024 group Culterim Gallery, Berlin DE
2024 group Debsaysyes, Antwerp BE
2023 About photography with Simone Hoang, Galerie Fontana, Amsterdam NL
2023 UNSEEN (fair) with Galerie Fontana, Amsterdam NL
2023 Sprinboard Art Fair (fair), This Art Fair, Utrecht NL
2023 Our curated self (group), Debsaysyes, Amsterdam NL
2023 Uitfeest (group), FOTODOK, Utrecht NL
2023 myspace (group), Kunstpodium-T, Tilburg NL
2023 till the end of perfect (group), Art Rotterdam side programme, NL
2023 Voorbij en Gaande (group), Galerie Pouloeuff, Naarden NL
2023 echoes of a culture (group), Kunsthof 88, Almelo NL
2022 UNSEEN (fair) with Galerie Fontana, Amsterdam NL
2022 Hoe = het nu (group), ACEC , Apeldoorn NL
2022 De Belofte #17 (group), Kunstliefde, Utrecht NL
2022 As the world turns (group), Huis v/d Fotografie, Rotterdam NL
2022 Esmee van Zeeventer (solo), Galerie Joghem, Amsterdam, NL
2022 Longing for a place I’ve never been to (solo), De Gelderlandfabriek, Culemborg NL
2021 Best of Graduates (group), galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam NL
2021 Graduates Showcase (online), the Pupils Sphere, UK
2021 AKI finals (graduation show), AKI Artez, Enschede NL
2021 Passing by (curator), City Centre Enschede NL
publications
2025 Magic hour II Boooooooom2025 PRISM Magazine Canada
2023 Fotofilmic JRNL 15 editor Milo Montelli (Skinnerboox)
2023 newspaper Eemlander
2021 NRC, article by Rianne van Dijck
2021 Graduate showcase, zine, the Pupils Sphere
2021 Artez Magazine
2021 Tubantia, Passing By
2020 Further 02, photobook by Fotobus Society
2020 Encourage, photobook by Canon
2019 Visa l’pour Image, Canon student programme
education
2024 artist village, WARP, BE and Make Eindhoven, NL
2022/23 lighthouse at FOTODOK, Utrecht, NL
2022/23 apprentice master at Kunstpodium-T, Tilburg, NL
2022 De Belofte at Kunstliefde, Utrecht, NL
2017 - 2022 BA Creative Media, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede, NL
2016 - 2021 BA Fine Art, Artez AKI, Enschede, NL
2020 Masterclass with Laura El-Tantawy
2019 NOOR workshop, NOOR images with Sanne de Wilde & Sebastian Liste, Dortmund, DE
awards/nominations & grants
2024 Mondriaanfund Artist Start
2024 Gerbrandy fund
2024 Galerie Pouloeuff Stipendium, winner
2021 Lakeside Residency award, 2nd
residencies
2024 October - December Luceberthuis, Bergen NL 2024 May - July Culterim Biesenthal/Berlin, DE
related experiences
2024 community residency & dinner at Luceberthuis
currently color darkroom collective, Rotterdam
currently analog photography workshops in my studio
past teaching photography at University of Twente
past photography and darkroom assistent at AKI Artez