Luna van der Straaten



Between the folds
Stuck in the between
The death of the living

about
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Luna van der Straaten (2001) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam. Her practice investigates the human need to impose structure on a fundamentally ungraspable world. Through painting, printmaking and casting, she explores how systems such as religion, science and language attempt to impose order on uncertainty. These systems offer a way to navigate and make sense of the world. Yet they also set boundaries. They categorise, exclude and determine what can be seen, named or understood. Systems promise clarity in the face of chaos, but they also simplify, compress and sometimes distort the complexity they seek to organise. Rather than resolving this tension, she aims to inhabit it. Her work not only reflects on these structures, but also examines how artistic processes themselves can operate as systems, through repetition, ritual and rule-based procedures.

This investigation takes shape in different ways, through layered compositions, asemic writing and plaster casting. Asemic writing resembles language but resists fixed meaning, exposing both the authority and fragility of linguistic structures.It functions as a kind of ritual that disrupts readability, opening up the work to multiple interpretations and shifting meanings. Painting becomes a space where control and surrender are continuously negotiated through layering, erasure and revision. 

Plaster plays an important role as a material that can fix both form and mark in time. It refers both to ancient forms of inscription, and the desire to preserve and stabilise what is inherently unstable.




Exhibtions
Art Brussels - With Josilda da Conceicao Gallery, Brussels (BE)
23/04 - 26/04 2026, group show

Expositieruimte 38CC, Delft (NL) - Fruiting Bodies
19/07 - 14/09 2025, group show

Factor IJ, Amsterdam (NL)
02/07 - 31/07 2025, solo show

Exposure Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, Utrecht (NL)
26/06 - 30/06 2024, group show 

Troef, Leiden (NL) - Fuse: Unsettled
04/10 - 06/11 2023, group show 

De Nijverheid, Utrecht (NL) - Soul, mind, life soul”
06/02 - 27/02 2023, group show


Residencies
Masereel Residency
01/02 - 01/03 2027

SIM Residency Korpúlfsstaðir 
03/01 - 31/03 2026 - Funded by Amarte fonds & Gerbrandy cultuurfonds


Grants
Amarte Fonds Ontwikkelbijdrage, 2026
Gerbrandy cultuurfonds, 2026

Education
BA Illustration – Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, 2020-2024


Contact
+31 6 81509606
lunavanderstraaten@gmail.com