Esmee Van Zeeventer / Popel Coumou / Marleen Sleeuwits / Laurent Lafolie / Leyla Cardenas.
Esmee Van Zeeventer
Born in 1997 in Rotterdam.
Esmee (Rotterdam, 1997) is a Dutch artist with a BA in Fine Arts (2021) and Media Arts (2022).
Since graduating, she has presented her work in notable exhibitions, including "The Best of" at Ron Mandos Gallery in Amsterdam and Fontana Gallery, as well as two solo exhibitions at Gelderlandfabriek and Joghem Gallery. Her work has been shown at NRC, The Pupilsphere, PRISM, Booooooom, and Fotofilmic JRNL 15. She participated in the Unseen photography fair (2022, 2023) and the Springboard Art Fair (2023), and was selected for FOTODOK's Lighthouse program in Utrecht. In 2024, Esmee completed two residencies with Culterim in Berlin and at the Luceberthuis in Bergen. That year, she also won the Pouleoff Gallery scholarship and received support from the Mondrian Fund. Since the age of four, my mother, brothers, and I have moved frequently. Rarely staying in one place for long, my sense of home became fragmented.
I began to distrust my memories. Thinking back on the places I once lived, I struggle to distinguish details, and I feel my memories change with each recollection. The fabric of a curtain softens, the layout of the house blurs. Confident in my memories, I began to tell a story, but my brothers reminded me that I hadn't even been born yet. As I began to document the world around me, I became fascinated by the truth "promised" by photographic technology and its ability to preserve a moment of reality. I long for the existence of a world that cannot always be defined, but that makes me long to return to that intangible place.
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Popel Coumou
Born in 1978 in the Netherlands
Popel Coumou (1978, Netherlands) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (2004) and has since exhibited her work both in the Netherlands and internationally. Her work is included in several collections, including the Kunstmuseum The Hague, Maison de Marseille, FOAM Amsterdam, the Dutch Ministries of Economic Affairs and Foreign Affairs, the Dutch government, AKZONobel, Statoil, as well as numerous private and public collections.
In recent years, Coumou has had several solo exhibitions, including at the Fotomuseum in The Hague, Museum Hilversum, Museum aan het Vrijthof, TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam, and Keijsers Koning Gallery in Dallas, USA. She has also participated in group exhibitions, including at Escher in het Paleis and Château de Flamanville in France. She also presented her solo work at Paris Photo 2024 and the Unseen Photography Fair in Amsterdam 2023.
In 2021, Popel Coumou published an award-winning book. Her work is represented by TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam and Keijsers Koning Gallery in Dallas. In addition to her exhibitions, she has completed several commissions, including a site-specific work for AMC Hospital and a series of 12 stand-alone images for Hermès International. Her work has been recognized by the Hyères Photography Competition (2007), the Meijburg Art Commission (2022), and the Somfy Prize (2022), among others.
Over the past 20 years, Popel's work has followed a consistent trajectory, with each stage of its development taking on its full meaning and surprising everyone who follows it. The artist previously presented photographs of her collages and miniatures as the final result, a practice she has abandoned in recent years. These original and unique collages, now presented as works of art, further blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, figuration and abstraction. She experiments tirelessly to find new forms of photographic expression. Her work is supported by the Mondriaan Fund in the Netherlands.
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Marleen Sleeuwits
Born in 1980 in Enschede, Netherlands.
Multidisciplinary artist Marleen Sleeuwits, born in 1980 in Enschede, lives and works in The Hague. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2001 and obtained a bachelor's degree in photography, followed by a master's degree in the same discipline at the AKV St. Joost in Breda in 2005.
His photographic works, objects and installations have been exhibited at the Contact Fotofestival in Toronto, the Het Nederlands Fotomuseum, the Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Centre photographique de Rouen (France), the Museum für Konkrete Kunst (Germany), the House of Arts in Brno (Czech Republic), the Belo Horizonte International Photography Festival (Brazil), the Jeonju Photo Festival (South Korea) and Foto Levallois (Paris).
In 2025, Marleen Sleeuwits held her first major solo exhibition at the Fotomuseum in The Hague, Netherlands. This exhibition included a major retrospective of her work and a monumental spatial installation.
Marleen Sleeuwits has presented solo and group exhibitions at the Sous les Étoiles gallery in New York and the A ppr oc he a photography fair in Paris. She also created an installation at the Contact Photo Festival in Toronto and the Meta Eye Festival in Shanghai, China. Here are some examples of her works on display.
In 2016, Marleen Sleeuwits published her first major monograph, "On the Soft Edge of Space," published by Onomatopee. This book offers an overview of her work over the past eight years. This book is a work of art in its own right, adding an extra dimension to her oeuvre.
Marleen's work has been recognized with several awards, grants, and nominations, including from the Meijburg Art Committee and Foam Talent, a nomination for the Prix de Rome, and several grants from the Mondriaan Fund. The art collections of the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, AkzoNobel, KPMG, the Valkhof Museum, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and several private collections also contain works by Sleeuwits.
Marleen Sleeuwits is represented by Galerie Bart, Amsterdam (Netherlands), and Galerie Sous Les Étoiles, New York (United States).
http://www.marleensleeuwits.nl/
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Laurent Lafolie
Born in France in 1963.
Born in France in 1963, Laurent Lafolie has been a photographer since 1980. The early years of his practice led him to collaborate with directors and then, from 1994, with contemporary choreographers. Since 2005, his research has been engaged in independent artistic projects where work is carried out on the mechanism of image perception, essentially using the face as a medium. Notions such as identity, intimacy, duality, self-image and reconstruction have been associated with these in recent years.
Several works produced from archive images have also led him to question the themes of disappearance and the relationship to time. This last theme has been taken up and articulated with that of memory in the evolving Missingu project composed to date of 200 faces photographed from the front with a view camera and restored on 3,6 g/m² paper whose appearance, close to the veil and its transparency, places them on the threshold of visibility.
Concretely, Laurent Lafolie's work responds both to the desire to make the image a photographic object and the exhibition space a space for photographed, sensitive and playful presentation. The concept of the photographic object can be found from his first platinum-palladium* contact prints to his projects on washi**, glass and other supports. It is also readable in the arrangement and layout of the images where space is left for the play of multiple readings: superposition, inversion, accumulation, postponement, appearance/disappearance, visibility/invisibility, etc.
Several projects are generally brought together during the presentations; they come together to form a photographic distribution where the reader gradually reinvents the images through the movements he makes and the points of view he adopts. Each presentation – interior or exterior – is thus the means of developing a construction adapted to cultural, spatial contexts etc… in which [the visitor's relationship to] the image becomes an act framed by the perceptible, shaped by the invisible and tending towards the unrepresentable.
* The platinum-palladium process is a contact printing technique with both visual and tactile qualities. The appearance and feel are similar to what an engraving can offer.
** Japanese paper
https://www.laurentlafolie.photography/
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Leyla Cardenas
Lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.
Cárdena's installations, sculptures, and multimedia works explore urban ruins and cityscapes as indices of social transformation, loss, and historical memory. Drawing on the decomposition of the physical and emotional fabric of affected spaces, abandoned structures, archives, and remains serve as material for her work, following a sculptural strategy inspired by history, architecture, and archaeology.
Recent projects: In 2023, anthological exhibition "De volver se" at the University Museum of Visual Arts UJTL in Bogotá. In 2022, she participated in the 16th Lyon Biennial "Manifesto of Fragility". In 2019, she received the CIFO Award and, in 2018, she participated in the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador. In 2017, she participated in the California-Pacific Triennial (CA-USA).
His work has been exhibited in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio-NY, Q21Museums Quartier-Wien, LACMA,
OCMA, MFAH, Palais de Tokyo, Museo de Arte de Zapopán- México, CAM-Raleigh, Institute of
Contemporary Art-SanJose (SJICA), Museo de Arte Moderno-Medellín, House of Latin America- ́
Paris, Apexart-New York, Banco de la República Bogotá, among others. She has also presented solo exhibitions in Bogota, San José, Miami, Los Angeles, Paris and Madrid.
Recent awards and residencies include: CCA Andratx, Mallorca 2024, Pro-Helvetia Residency 2022, Cifo Award 2019, Oma Art Award 2016, Artist in Residence at Q21Museums Quartier Wien-Austria 2016, NEARCH-Art and Archaeology Residency “The Materiality of the Invisible” at the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, 2015-2017. Winner of the Bogota Biennale Award 2012.
Cárdenas's works are present in public and private collections in Colombia, South America, Europe and the United States.
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