Awoiska van der Molen (b.1972) is a Dutch visual artist who focuses predominantly on photography. Her abstract, black and white landscapes represent a desire to reconnect with the ‘uncorrupted territory of nature.’
Awoiska studied Architecture and Design, and then Photography, at Minerva Art Academy, Groningen, Netherlands. In 2003, she graduated with an MFA in Photography at the St. Joost Academy, Breda, Netherlands.
In 2017, she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for Blanco, a meditative collection of black and white landscape photography. Her first major museum solo exhibition, the series has been praised for its evocation of gentle, prolonged observation.
According to Maartje van der Heuvel, researcher/curator of photography at Leiden University, Awoiska ‘visits places on earth that move her. […] she ‘gauges’, by means of the senses, the genius loci or spirit of the place, travelling to places to which she intuitively feels drawn.
‘Then, in that landscape, she seeks silence, allowing the landscape to operate upon her and submitting to it.’
In this sense, Awoiska’s landscape photography echoes her earlier portraiture in capturing introspective encounters between people and their environment – particularly in relation to the ways the outer world can reveal hidden depths of personal character.
Awoiska has produced three books of landscape photographs, made in remote places. Her work is held in the collections of the Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography (Amsterdam) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (London).
Texts cost £5 plus one standard rate message. Thank you!
