Esther Kokmeijer

Esther Kokmeijer (Dokkum, 1977) currently lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany. She studied graphic design from 1996 - 2001 at the Faculty of Fine Arts Artez. In 2013 she attended the course in Arctic and Antarctic science at the Arctic Centre of the State University of Groningen. In many of her projects she works with diverse scientists and other professionals from different backgrounds. Her work has been widely exhibited and published throughout the world. She has participated in residency programs in the Netherlands, Indonesia, South Korea, The Arctic, Antarctica, Spitsbergen, Germany, France, Mongolia and China.

The world at large and the connections and movements within it are the main focus of Esther Kokmeijer's work. She is investigating the origins of nature through mappings of intersections between man-made and ‘natural' forms of reality. She is interested in the way ‘landscapes’ are shaped, interact and interfere in the lives of people and vice versa.

Much of her work originates during trips, so movement itself is an important part of this work. In her travels she explores quantifiable positions related to geographical coordination systems, climatic phenomena and politically vs topologically defined borders. 

Her works and artistic research is a quest for the life history of the earth, geological texts and images saved as a diary and archived in nature and mind. Geography means literally describing the world; Kokmeijer would rather depict it in a poetic way springing from an inner desire to make the ‘invisible’, visible.