Josephine Baan

Josephine Baan (b. 1987, UK, lives and works in Rotterdam and London) received her BFA from the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam, and her MFA from Goldsmiths, London. Recent projects and exhibitions include It’s a Dirty Job, Arc Residency Romainmôtier and Foound, Geneva; Miley Farage Presents… Matt’s Gallery, London; Promenád, Művelődési Szint, Budapest; At the same place by coincidence… Studio Borgerstraat, Rotterdam; The Gallery Project, Long Museum, Shanghai; De Kamer, Galerie RAM, Rotterdam.

Josephine Baan’s practice concerns itself with working and thinking through various disciplines and paradigms of what art is for in the-world-as-we-know-it. She works in painting, writing, video, performance and the public space. Her work stems from a will to act and to activate, embracing a willful ignorance, playfulness, experimentation, absolute sincerity and self-generated energy. The work is fast, contemplative, headless, curious, abject, vexatious, funny, punny and dead serious. It is is an active response to contemporary estrangement, and a small, positive iteration of resistance.


During her residency at HIAP Josephine Baan intends to open her studio doors in order to foster a discourse concerning the role of art and artists in contemporary Western society. Through reciprocal activation Baan hopes to gain insight into potential modes and methods for art to exist beyond its commercial value as designated by today’s neoliberal art market. What could an alternative approach of value allocation consist of, and how can we work towards an art production that resists total subsumption into capital?