Luna van der Straaten



Particles of belief
Stuck in the between
The death of the living

about
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Luna van der Straaten (b. 2001) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam, NL. 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 ways to navigate and make sense of the world. Yet they also set boundaries. They determine what can be seen, named or understood. Rather than resolving this tension, she uses it as a driving force within her practice.

Van der Straaten’s research takes shape through painting, asemic writing and plaster casting. Painting is a space where she freely assembles different systems of meaning, combining archival and personal images with drawings. By doing so, new connections emerge, shifting meaning and narrative. Asemic writing resembles language but resists fixed meaning, exposing both the authority and fragility of linguistic structures. It functions as a method to test how meaning is constructed, keeping interpretation open. 

Alongside painting, plaster works introduce processes of casting, engraving and fossilising. These gestures refer to ancient forms of inscription, as well as to the desire to preserve and stabilise what is inherently unstable.

By bringing together material, image and language, her work inhabits the space where systems of meaning begin to shift, overlap and lose certainty.





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

SÍM Residency Seljavegur, Reykjavik (IS)
26/03 - 27/03 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