Marjolijn Boterenbrood

The work of Marjolijn Boterenbrood arises from the phenomena of a place, in all its aspects. A square, a park in a city, a valley in Siberia or an island in the North Sea. With cartography she makes different layers of experience of a landscape visible. She grew up with maps, nautical charts. They are vital to know where you are and where the current is taking you so you don’t end up on a sandbank. By mapping, drawing, collecting materials and stories and perform actions, she lets the materials from the place like earth, mud, clay, water, seaweed, salt, wood, wax and fungi and narratives write their own score. Like a temporary director/composer/conductor/choreographer she works to connection, to transform and find new ways to experience.

In De Balie she will exhibit works from two long-term projects: Connecting Geographies and The Landscape Speaks.

Connecting Geographies (2022-2025): an installation with reworked maps of 30 artists from Central Asia. This cartography arose during her road trip from Amsterdam to Bishkek in 2023. The maps of her project Letter to a Silk Road were literally overwritten by the artists she met along the way. Overwritten with new stories, shifting the ‘power’ from the original map maker, Boterenbrood, to those who contributed and added new layers to the maps. Together they made an alternative Silk Road, based on reciprocity.

The Landscape Speaks (2019-2020): In 2016 Boterenbrood, as a member of an international group of scientists, conducted research in the Karakol Valley in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. The aim was to connect local knowledge with scientific understanding and to explore how the local people see and experience their landscape.Based on what they told and showed her – personal stories and myths, sensory experiences as well as ecological and geographical information – she mapped out different layers of the landscape.The Altai people pointed out special places: positive and negative places, places of power and places for animals, plants, and spirits. The spaces for animals, plants, and spirits are the areas where people do not go, these are considered as sacred spots and treated with respect. In Boterenbrood’s work, they appear as white or open spaces.

Marjolijn Boterenbrood (born 1954 Amsterdam) studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Her projects took place in Amsterdam, Haarlem, Schouwen Duiveland, Vlieland, Siberia and in her roadtrip through Eurasia. Her work was exposed in Artstation Samarkand Uzbekistan (2025), PAKT Amsterdam (2024) Ena Bena Sho, Bishkek Kyrgizstan (2023), ACEC in Apeldoorn (2023), Rijksmuseum Twenthe (2022), Zone2Source Amsterdam (2024 and 2019) Framer Framed (2023), Casco Utrecht (2022) Vishal in Haarlem (2022), ITGWO Vlieland (2021-22), ‘Salon’ Mister Motley (2020).

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