Upcoming art exhibitions:
2026
6th of March - 7th of Juni | Lend Me Your Ears, TENT | Performing as storyteller for David Maroto’s installation Lend Me Your Ears
7th of June | Het Aktiverend Volkstheater, Witte Rook | Performing as storyteller for David Maroto’s installation Het Aktiverend Volkstheater | Opening 7th of June 2026
22nd of April, Conversas, Artist talk, TENT, Rotterdam
Recent:
December 2025, Granted Project Stipend, Fonds Kwadraat
13th December 2025, Performance, POPOP, Nijmegen
November 2025, Granted Project Stipend, CBK Rotterdam
September 2025, Granted Project Stipend, Stichting Volkskracht Rotterdam
Sept - October 2025 | Screening PLOW | The inaugural Festival of Video Performance Art |
Helsinki, Vienna, and Riga
Sept. 2025 - Auctioning of the work ‘Relics from the sunken World’’ - De Aanschouw Veiling | Rotterdam
23rd of June - 11th of July 2025 | Teaching performance art course | University of Xiamen | China
28 of March - 16th of April 2025 | Auw! Wauw! - Verbeelding van verdriet en troost | Lebuinuskerk | Deventer
30th of November 2024 | Dear Shapes in Space @Papengas in Nijmegen | curating performance art event | in collab with POPOP
October 2024 | AIR @WitteRook | Breda
13 - 15th of September 2024 | ACRXL | in collab with WTC Art Gallery and Art Index Rotterdam | performance
20 & 21 September 2024 | 1st of September | presenting AIR @Art-S-Cool at Into the Woods Festival | Amersfoort
In collab with Lilian Kreuzberger, Antonio Guzman, Yair Callender, Timothy Scholte, Beng Yuengyong, Leslie Nagel, Mourad Aouragh en Afra Eisma |
ELJA Foundation
1st of September 2024 | presenting AIR @Art-S-Cool at Bosspot festival | Amersfoort
In collab with Lilian Kreuzberger, Antonio Guzman, Yair Callender, Timothy Scholte, Beng Yuengyong, Leslie Nagel, Mourad Aouragh en Afra Eisma |
ELJA Foundation
20th of June 2024 | presenting AIR @Art-S-Cool at Nooit Meer Naar Huis | Scheveningen
In collab with Lilian Kreuzberger, Antonio Guzman, Yair Callender, Timothy Scholte, Beng Yuengyong, Leslie Nagel, Mourad Aouragh en Afra Eisma |
ELJA Foundation
7 - 16th of June 2024 | Oerol | performance & music | in collab with Ososonic - sound art
Art is Life & Life is Art
Jessica (she/they) creates sensory performances, music, rituals, speculative tools, and visual installations as means for mankind to collectively evolve towards the new age:
the Symbioceen. Performatively and artistically researching and writing on topic of
The Art of Living (LevensKunst) as her contribution for man and nature to again co-inhabite our beautiful earth in harmony.
Working with performance - music - food art - fine arts - storytelling
#Folklorist | #AlterModernManifest | #ArtOfLiving | #Symbioceen | #Nature | #Artivism
Jessica works and lives in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Portfolio available upon request
CV / Exhibition list / Press coverage /
Artist Bio
Be it for human beings like me, be it for other animals, plants, nature-beings, born into domains, ruled, manipulated and supressed by pover human minds. It seems to be an endless and fruitless undertaking: the journey: fighting free from it’s shadows and evolving towards the new world. So endless and hopeless it often seems. But the fibers in our stardust-based bodies still know; in affection and silence it can deeply remember: ‘’In the end it only took trusting, in a mustard seed.’’
Jessica van Deursen (she/they: it’s all is okay) is working on a artsy fartsy movement: one that will change the world. Nothing less. Period. But not sharing too many words here yet. If you want to be part in this to-be historic movement towards the Alter Modernity, then subscribe to the newsletter below, and receive all inside information.
Jessica’s work can be seen as a diary of her own journey as a human being. Saying ‘fuck you’ to the odds of growing up in a troubled family, and breaking free from it’s subsequent conditions. She handles her life as the subject of her investigation on the nature/nurture question. Just curious as to how far she can take it, in this life long endeavor, she calls ‘‘LevensKunst’’ (Art of Living).
Over the last 15 years, Jessica’s created happenings and performances. In often very testing performances, she explored her physical and mental capabilities.
Through the combination of music, installation, performance and storytelling, she created spa-like retreats [The Great Health] , both dreamlike and disgust-provoking experiences and other estranging realms for the visitor to walk right into, to likewise explore their minds and body’s capabilities, and to dive into unexplored alternative realms, together with the artist(s).
Through the combination of music, installation, performance and storytelling, she created spa-like retreats [The Great Health] , both dreamlike and disgust-provoking experiences and other estranging realms for the visitor to walk right into, to likewise explore their minds and body’s capabilities, and to dive into unexplored alternative realms, together with the artist(s).
More recently, she started ‘performatively designing’ tools, rituals and lifestyles for alternative ways of living: more sustainable, autonomous and more engaged, minimalist and eco-friendly: for more conscious ways of living. Often based on researching forgotten historic dutch / northern European traditions, knowledge, and crafts. Translating them into contemporary and appealing practically applicable desings. Because that way, her online blog-followers, can join her in the process and think along.
Like creating a hyper ecological and ‘klederdracht’ (Dutch folklore wear’) inspired minimalist set of clothing, which she wore for a full year to test this lifestyle [Re-Fashion]. During covid-times, the started creating her own medicine from herbs that grow no further than one kilometer from her home or temporary residence [Re-Pharmacy].
In 2016 Jessica was rewarded the Young Talent Grand by the Mondriaan Foundation for her work.
Jessica studied BA fine-arts at the Willem de Kooning academy in Rotterdam,
Performance-art & Community-art at Codarts / Piet Zwart (MA education)
and a Minor in philosophy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.
Forthcoming and recent previous solo/duo exhibitions include Art Rotterdam (NL) | ICI University for the Creative Arts Xiamen (CH) | Glasshouse NYC (US) | Palazzo del Mora, Venice (IT) | Trienal Deformes (CL), Pictura, Dordrecht (NL) | KIPAF, Kolkata (IN) | Concordia, Enschede (NL) | Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (NL) | Root Gallery, Rotterdam (NL) | Pulchri studios, The Hague (NL) | Defibrilator Performance Art Gallery, Chicago (US) | Goethe Institut, Rotterdam (NL) | Art ZNSTD, Zaandam (NL) Stedelijk Museum Breda (NL) | This Art Fair, Amsterdam (NL)
From December 2020, I’ve been replacing the contents of my medicine cabinet with homemade plant-based meds. For this, I used herbs and weeds; that grow within
1 kilometer from my residency, and with otherwise bio-degradable and sustainably produced ingredients. By doing this, one illness at a time, I’ve been forcing myself to learn the names of all these locally growing plants and to rediscover forgotten knowledge.
I find my recipes in old books or I create my own recipes, which I share on my research blog Arty Farty Life. Each little sculpture in this installation contains one of these recipes. Together they form an continuously growing installation.
Year
2020 - 2021
Materials
Basswood, eco beeswax, ‘super sap’ bio epoxy, herbs and plants
Size
2 x 2 meters (and extending and expanding still)
PLOW
Performance video (dyptich) | 03:05 & 03:49
As presented in immersive installation at BigArt, Amsterdam 2022
A voice from the not too far future, poetically shares in whispers, how the evolution of man came about as a result of the unlivable circumstances that arose on planet earth, due to climate change.
The Great Health
Year
2023
Size
2,50 x 1,20 x 0,40 m
Food art installation. Platters created with local sand and concrete. All food was made with herbs and plants, picked no further than 1 kilometer from the gallery. Visitors can take home recipes, to replicate the dishes themselves.
Symbiose
Necklace | two people's hair, ruby and glass beads, silver thread | (30 x 60 cm).
During Victorian times, it was common, to create jewelry out of a deceased persons' hair; 'mourning jewelry', these pieces were called. At the height of this custom's popularity, merchants would even travel from village to village, to buy the hair of the less fortunate...
For the past fifteen years, I've been a caregiver for one of my close relatives. The relation I've had with this person, has always been complex; It's completely based on trust, which makes the bond very fragile, and because this is also a paid job, which partly enables my art practice. I feel like I had to make many crucial life decisions for this person throughout the years; as where to study, and where to live. And recently, due to circumstances, also how to look, as I was trusted with the task of cutting off his hair.
White Privilege
(2019) | Sculpture | 20 x 4 x 25 cm | birch wood & glass
From left to right:
Breast milk, 01-29-20, one day after returning from Kolkata, India
Milk formula, 01-29-20, produced in Switzerland
Breast milk, 03-04-20, produced on vegan diet in Rotterdam
Re-Fashion
For one year and one day, I wore this self-designed, hemp and other eco materials-based, consisting of a minimal amount of items, set of clothes. Inspired by research on former dutch historical (such as folklore ‘klederdracht’) clothing traditions.
The set was made by a local tailor and was sponsored through a crowdfunding campaign. The set was altered and restored by myself, throughout the year, forcing myself to learn about all kinds of sowing, washing and mending techniques.
7.83 HZ
(2021) | Riga Performance Art Festival, LV
In times in which social distancing had become the new social norm, by singing together with an audience via digital means, distance can nevertheless be overcome. Likewise, sound and intention are proven to be able to influence behavior of molecules beyond dimensions of time and space.
By inviting an online audience, with people from all over the world, to sing along with our performance, we aimed to create a humming for the Earth and mankind, which are facing an even graver crisis than covid-19
Homo Fragilis
(2020) | darational performance | 5 hours | during Frank Taal gallery exhibition 10+, Rotterdam & This Art Fair, Amsterdam, NL
Materials: vitamin pills, band aid, rubber gloves, syringes, ampouls, mushrooms, living plants
Modern Medicine
(March 18th, 2019) | Modern Medicine (for Poorous Measures)
Material: chicken fence wire, thyme, chamomile, cinnamon, red pepper, nettle, ginger, lemon, sage, dill, radish, orange, liquorice, pine tree, lungwort |
Photo print: 110 x 70 cm, dibond print on plexiglass
The Meek
(2019) | 60 minute performance | Venice International PerformanceArtWeek | PalazzoMora (IT)
‘‘Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the Earth’’
(2020)
40 minute story telling / immersive installation / music / food-art ad performance | Presentation during residency presentation at Witte Rook, Breda
In collaboration with folk singer Monique van Deursen
Dionysos, the mythical protector of the wild, inspired Niezsche to coin the idea of ''Die Grosse Gesundheit'', in which a society welcomes evanescence, destruction, disgust, chaos, intense sexual drive, suffering, pain, death, fear and insecurity as desired qualities, in order the maintain the natural balance in life.
Performers Monique and Jessica van Deursen (a.k.a. Alter Moderna) invite you to come receive a performative post-covid-19 cleanse. Visitors could ‘book’ a session at Witte Rook. In between and after the performances, the space could be visited and experienced as an exhibition.
Future Whispers
(2023) | 3 hour performance at Frank Taal Gallery, Rotterdam
Storytelling and durational performance
