About the artists of Villa

We proudly present the first confirmed artists of Villa: Elsemarijn Bruys, Folkert de Jong, Gilleam Trapenberg, Levi van Veluw, Thomas Trum, Vera Gulikers, Willem de Haan, Yamuna Forzani and Zoro Feigl. More names will be announced during the summer months. At a later moment, it will also be communicated which works the artists will show in Villa.

Elsemarijn Bruys

Elsemarijn Bruys (1989) playfully investigates our senses. She influences and manipulates sensory perception through sculptures, installations, and architectural interventions, and sharpens the relationship between the viewer and the space. Bruys aims for maximum effect with minimal interventions. Air, reflection, and the intangible are materialized.

Her work is about the in-between space and the interaction between visitor and space, and between people. She draws on principles from minimal art, an art movement from the 1960s in which not the work but the (museum) space, and its values and context, are central.

She confronts viewers with themselves and their presence in the space through reflective surfaces that endlessly distort and twist, or through large inflatables that leave no room for human presence. Elsemarijn’s practice is a theatrical celebration of deception. Truth is presented as a construct, an agreement. For Elsemarijn, truth is ultimately always a material matter that she joyfully and relentlessly splinters and pushes to the extreme. She compresses air into something tangible that nearly bursts at the seams, distorts the visitor’s smile into a grotesque grimace – until it becomes beautiful again.


Folkert de Jong

Folkert de Jong (1972) is known for his life-size sculptural groups made of Styrofoam and polyurethane foam, materials used for insulation in construction, architecture, and the Hollywood film industry. With this material, atypical for art and originating from the petrochemical industry, De Jong creates remarkable and complex tableaux of grotesque worlds, addressing power, violence, disaster, and other disturbing aspects of the human condition. Intrigued by the depths of the human soul, the artist drags the viewer into a world where the bizarre and the vulnerable meet.

His work often evokes art historical associations alongside contemporary political issues and current affairs, with a sense of a post-apocalyptic future perspective. Over the years, the sculptures of Folkert de Jong have become virtuosic and painterly. His sculptural groups seem to emerge from the material effortlessly.

The early sculptures appear rough and unfinished. They are usually monochrome blue and pink, the colors of Styrofoam itself. Later, Folkert introduces a richer color palette and cleverly combines figuration, abstraction, and symbols in his works. The figures are often life-size, giving the viewer the chance to relate to the sculptures and feel like a witness to the compelling, often ominous scenes.

“History has always fascinated me. Especially that it can be viewed from different perspectives. What occupies my mind is the metabolism of time. How time and events are intertwined, digested, and what remains of them. The morality and meaning of events is therefore difficult to determine from a single point of view and can change depending on the spirit of the times. What does that mean for the history we are making right now?”


Gilleam Trapenberg

Gilleam Trapenberg zooms in on the many paradoxes present in the socio-cultural landscape of the Caribbean. With his camera, he challenges the stereotyping and cultural misinformation often employed by the dominant (Western) media landscape in the representation of Caribbean life. Although Trapenberg is sometimes also seduced by the picturesque qualities of Curaçao, the focus of his work lies on the realities of the colonial past and the continuous flow of goods and people in relation to mass tourism on the islands.

Trapenberg studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and moved to the Netherlands at the age of nineteen. Since then, his works have been exhibited at Foam Photography Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Fotografiska Stockholm, and the Shanghai Center of Photography.


Levi van Veluw

Over the past 17 years, Levi van Veluw (1985) has built a diverse and continually evolving oeuvre that is exhibited worldwide. He is known for his installations, sculptures, drawings, and autobiographical films that originate from childhood memories. From the depths of his memory, the artist brings forth images that evoke universal emotions and question our human logic. Levi plays with elements of order and chaos and poses questions to the viewer about our obsessive drive for control.

Van Veluw creates his works with utmost care and craftsmanship; his sculptures of clay and wood are made entirely by hand, giving them an authentic, rough, and organic character. His carefully constructed charcoal drawings show great symmetry and harmony, while his remarkable use of light evokes a strong, meditative atmosphere.

Levi’s installations offer intense and immersive experiences. In the past, he has built complete – albeit fictional – cathedrals, as well as other dark and sensory spaces built from enigmatic forms and materials. Visitors who enter these alternate realities become detached from their existing spatial interpretations. They experience a disruptive environment in which order and chaos exist side by side.


Thomas Trum

Thomas Trum (1989) is a painter particularly fascinated by the idea of leaving traces. Trum explores the abstract. He works within a self-imposed, limiting framework that focuses solely on line and color, varying in scale from a sheet of paper to a facade.

Research into materials, techniques, and spatial composition form the core of his work. He often creates his works on a large scale and develops unconventional tools, including giant felt-tip pens and custom-made rotating spray machines.

Fascinated by large vehicles such as agricultural machines that operate in rhythmic patterns with maximum efficiency, Thomas experiments with these techniques to continually discover new ways of creating images. The extensive preparations contrast with the execution of the final work, which sometimes takes only a few minutes. An interaction between human and tool, like a choreography to apply the line to the surface in the best possible way.

The physical effort is visible in his works, a movement captured in color. The studio functions as a place for his ongoing study in a clearly recognizable, colorful, and abstract visual language.

Vera Gulikers

Vera Gulikers (1991) focuses on painting and sculpture, examining the medium of painting and its close relation to the painterly qualities of so-called “female” conventions. She works with old painting techniques such as egg tempera, fresco, and embroidery, combined with screen printing, couture textiles, cleaning products, and techniques originating from the interior industry.

Vera was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie (2017–2019), obtained a Master of Fine Art from Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp (2016), and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Art and Design (2014). In 2017, she received the Royal Award for Modern Painting for her works Poets- en Testdoeken. Her work is included in various national and international private and museum collections.

Willem de Haan

Willem De Haan (1996) challenges and undermines the socially conditioned and politically determined rules of everyday locations. By adding artificial elements in a convincing yet uncanny way, his works directly influence daily situations. His suggestive sculptural interventions refer to the influence of props on fictional scenarios in film and theater.

All projects are conceived in and around Europe. In recent years, objects and scenarios have been developed in local studios in, among others, Rotterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Antwerp, and Vienna. Willem’s ambition is to create iconic visual scenarios with special attention to local impact, executed in timeless designs, formed by just eight years of professional experience.

Yamuna Forzani

Yamuna Forzani (1993) is a multidisciplinary artist and queer activist, driven by the desire to build her own queer utopia in which her community is central and celebrated – as both part of and inspiration for her creative work.

Yamuna’s work takes form through textiles; she explores this medium in collaboration with other design, art, and social initiatives. This often translates into organizing events and dance performances, integrating fashion and costume, public art, and versatile installations.

Zoro Feigl

Zoro Feigl (1983) creates work that moves. Zoro is fascinated by why things work the way they work, why something moves the way it moves. Zoro’s installations often consist of industrial materials that he sets in motion to dance, rotate, writhe, or flail. Zoro gives his material a poetic power through movement. A load of balls becomes a swarm of starlings, a conveyor belt with water becomes as enchanting as a fireplace. He tries to understand the behavior of the material as well as possible: the material as a beast he wants to tame. Zoro tries to gain control and to understand what makes the forces manifest in this way. Only then can the material come to life, do something unexpected, or bring about something magical.