Antoinette Nausikaä

Driven by a personal need to find balance and stillness within a rapidly changing world, Antoinette Nausikaä (1973, NL) explores interconnectedness within our direct everyday environment. She makes long-term site-specific projects at places where culture and nature intertwine. It is the balance between the two that fascinates her.

Antoinette Nausikaä received her BA Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam (2004) and completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (2010). In 2008, she was awarded the Bouw in Beeld Photography Prize and nominated for the Somfy Photography Award in 2020. Her book Breathing Mountains was shortlisted Best Photo Book of the year at Photo Espana 2019.

Nausikaä exhibited at a.o. art institutions such as Rijksakademie Amsterdam (NL), Kunstraum Dusseldorf (DE), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (NL), AMC Amsterdam (NL), Photography Museum Huis Marseille Amsterdam (NL), Chinese European Art Center Xiamen (CN), Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam (NL). Her works are a.o present in the collections of Photography Museum Huis Marseille, UMC, AMC, LUMC, Brokken Zijp Foundation of modern and contemporary Art (BFA), DNB (The Dutch Bank), Altrecht GGZ, La Fondation Thalie.

By using photography, drawing and sculpture, Antoinette Nausikaä analyses and literally zooms in and out on her surroundings. Researching how the human abstract relates to the natural organic, the mundane to the transcendent, permanence to impermanence. In this way, she aims to show that things are inextricably linked, influence each other and that there is no such thing as a single perspective on a subject.

A River Runs Through Me (2020-ongoing)
A River Runs Through Me is Nausikaä’s ongoing project in which she explores the manifestation of nature and harmony within the formal structures of a city. With the fossils and the steaming water, she points us to the endless nature with human figures as its counterpart, our temporary body with all its emotions. The ceramic Fossil Plates are also part of this river project. They were made directly on location on the banks of the river Seine in Paris. The artist explores the interconnectedness in the metropolis by making the millions of years old fossils visible again in her clay prints and placing them alongside our contemporary daily life.
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Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice Figurines (2021)
The sculptures were made in Amsterdam in 2021, with a 24 karat golden glaze, at the time of the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. During these specific sacred moments, as a kind of ritual and a personal ode to the light, Nausikaä retreated into her studio with a lump of clay to make the sculptures.
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Breathing Mountains (2018)
For five years, Antoinette has worked on a long-term mountain project living around eight sacred mountains in Europe and Asia researching the balance between humans and nature. Mountain Earth Figurines is a tangible reminder of Breathing Mountains. She produced the sculptures from clay earth collected from those ancient mountains.
Read more about this project here

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