Rachel Heemskerk (1984) is a Rotterdam based visual artist whose practice mainly evolves around the lives that are lived by the many humans walking this earth, questioning ‘reality’ and the ‘self. She tells her stories by means of video, performances and installations.
‘I search between different worlds and attempt to discover how these worlds relate and try to make connections. A few years ago I made a short movie called Looking where I can not see. It’s an attempt to look inside the head of someone close without getting there.
Questioning the ‘why’ can also be expressed by a visceral short movie starring 4 Russian Salads or building a ‘waiting room’. For me planet earth is a place that enables you to create your own reality. This 'reality' is constantly changing, therefore we have different stories to tell.
MOTOR. Video Installation. Paradijskerk Rotterdam - MOTOR is the second part of the trilogy Everything is in motion which was launched in 2020. Where the first part, the short movie Chaos; a love affair focuses on the lovemaking between the two hands of God, the shaper and the shaped, the masculine and the feminine.
MOTOR is the sensory result of a research on transformation and vulnerability presented at the altar of the old Catholic church. Like the lobster who’s changing its skeleton in order to survive itself, we humans seem to have no choice but to shed our armor and find places to rebuild in order to grow.
The exhibition will have its festive opening on Friday the 21st of October at 19:00 hrs with an introduction by Reverend Bruce Rienstra, a sound performance by Matthijs van der Wilt and some ‘bridal tears’ to share.
Embalm Time - Keilewerf Exhibition during Art Rotterdam 2023
Seen from here/ there - Analog photography | Rotterdam 2020
Seen from here/ there - Analog photography | Rotterdam 2020
Anders Kijken. Photography Project in Healthcare | Amsterdam 2021 - Gedurende een periode van 6 maanden zijn de bewoners van Korte Water aan de slag gegaan met analoge camera's en hebben zij geoefend, gekeken en hun wereld vastgelegd op de gevoelige plaat.
Laat je verrassen en kijk door de ogen van de bewoners van Korte Water.
Anders Kijken is een fotografie project geïnitieerd en gecureerd door persoonlijk begeleider en beeldend kunstenaar Rachel Heemskerk. Met dank aan Stichting Vrienden van Philadelphia.
Momentum - Analog Photography, 2020. Kunstprijs Charlois 2022
You’ve often started to tell me who I am, but then suddenly stopped, leaving me asking questions that never get answered, telling me, “Wait. Not yet.”
from The Tempest. W.S
Change it while it’s changing you. Photography | Publieke werken | Rotterdam 2020 - A visual research about the ongoing process of creating and participating.
To hold on
To let go To be loved
To be abandoned
Always looking for this resolution
This temporary climax
To start all over again
Like waves.
Familiair | un | Familiair. Jedan Osam Jedan | Rotterdam 2021 - Group Exhibition curated by Lore Pilzecker and Rachel Heemskerk.
Together with Eef Veldkamp, Marieke Peetersk, Dante van Elburg, Lore Pilzecker and Rachel Heemskerk.
The traveller is often looking for unique experience in another world. A new environment, a different context that invites you to have a closer look. At the same time the traveller looks for something recognizable, universal or known found in the unknown. But with the traveller forced in the enclosed borders of her own environment, does this initiate a search for the strange and unknown in places that feel like home?
For this exhibition Rachel Heemskerk made a new work
'Once upon a time, we had
experiences in a faraway place'
A photograph can be seen as a souvenir of a moment, of an encounter that really happened.
Everything we experience and collect, we can not bring along when our time here is over.
Surrendered to those who listen, which stories do you want to be remembered?
How will this last memento look like, before the light bleaches out all shapes and colours and fades out the experience we once had in a faraway place?
But not now - Installation/ Performance/ Film, 2019. Stichting Beautiful Distress, Amsterdam.
"It is possible" says the gatekeeper. "But not now." the Trial- Franz Kafka.
By waiting you submit yourself to a rule. This might not be a big deal if you are waiting for the sun to rise. But what if you are not there by your own choice? What rules are you forced to submit to? Who came up with that rule? Suddenly waiting becomes about autonomy. You are told "not now" but maybe later. And there you are. Waiting. —
Chaos, a love affair. Film with Marcel Herkelman | Worm & Galerie de Jaloezie | Rotterdam 2020 - Now here we see, the wildest of love affairs. An intimate embrace of structure and chaos. The shaper and the shaped. The masculine and the feminine….
Chaos, a love affair is a story about the lovemaking between the two hands of God. Combining delicious, erotic images, with an integral philosophical approach to the masculine and the feminine.
