THE INSTITUTE FORUM · FEATURED MEMBERS
Jeanne van Heeswijk
Artist · Social Practice · Public Space
Art as a way for people to imagine, organise and shape the places they inhabit together.
Biography
Jeanne van Heeswijk is a Rotterdam-based artist whose long-term, community-embedded practice creates meeting places where public space, collective learning and civic action intersect. Her work often invites participants to become co-producers, building connections between local knowledge and wider political or cultural questions.
Philosophy & approach
Rather than treating artistic practice as an autonomous object, van Heeswijk works with the relationships and infrastructures through which people can take greater part in shaping shared futures. Her approach is often described through the idea of radicalising the local: attending closely to specific places while allowing their questions to speak beyond them.
Selected work & current practice
Her long-term projects include Trainings for the Not-Yet, the Ultradependent Public School, It’s OK… commoning uncertainties, the Social Practice Library and the Community Wellbeing Collective. Through Studio Jeanneworks, these projects have moved between educational experiments, cultural institutions, neighbourhood spaces and forms of collaborative organising.