Bio Catherine E. van Olden
Working in public and mobilising the public for social and political change to offer the possibility of an alternate future is at the heart of her work. Van Olden utilises the Japanese Knotweed’s cultural, natural and scientific history to explain a system of human and non-human relations that has brought us to the Anthropocene. Her PhD research generated materialistic considerations of a plant’s non-human agency by combining critical making and participatory design in zine-making workshops. Through cooperation with Japanese Knotweed, using botanical inks and Japanese Knotweed paper, Van Olden demonstrates how interactions embody and embed plants and individuals with whom they engage in higher socio-economic planes.
Catherine’s work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions in Belgium, France, the UK, the USA, and the Netherlands. Educated at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the Académie Royale in Brussels (hon.), and the GSA M.Litt. program (hon.) in Glasgow, she is the initiator of The Save the Loom Foundation. Save The Loom is an international, interdisciplinary art project that investigates the influence of sensory experiences on production processes and the significance of handicrafts in cultural history. Catherine is part of the AGA Lab, an artist-led printmakers’ lab in Amsterdam.
See Me Feel Me: Researching the Question of ME in the Fissure in Time.
(2025 - 2026; Blikopener, the Netherlands)
Themes: Visibility and Invisibility of Time Travel. Self-representation vs. external gaze.
Sensory experience (feeling, seeing). Memory, identity (heart, soul, and mind), and
time.
For a year, I have explored what it is like to be in an undefined landscape without a
horizon. Through my lens, I created an allegory of life, using technology and
craftsmanship to grasp the world. This is an investigation into making the invisible
visible, transforming it into tangible layers. A window offers a glimpse of a future
landscape and evokes a direct, physical, sensory experience where perception, space,
and time coincide. Space is experienced as fragmented continuity: light as matter,
heartbeat as structure, and time as a prismatic line running through the eyes. The
landscape remains in flux, striving to convey a full spectrum of emotion, from
uncertainty to hope.
One Swoop and In Time are part of that research.
https://weirdkid.online
catherinevanolden@gmail.com
Catherine E. van Olden
@catherine_e._van_olden_
@ catherine _van_olden
