Rachel de Joode

Rachel de Joode, a Dutch-born multimedia artist and educator now based in Berlin, boasts a notable international presence in museums, institutions, and galleries. Her art seamlessly merges photography, sculpture, and painting.

Biography of Rachel de Joode

Rachel de Joode was born in 1979 in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. She pursued time-based arts studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She was awarded the Mondriaan Fonds International Presentations Grant in 2016 and the Mondriaan Fonds Project Grant in 2017.

Apart from her artistic career, de Joode is also an educator. She has been a lecturer at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne since 2017 and an Instructor/Mentor at the online art school Vantage Points since 2022. Additionally, she has shared her knowledge at numerous institutions, including The Academy for Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, the University of Westminster, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW in Basel, and DAAP University of Cincinnati, among others.

De Joode's artwork has been showcased internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions across museums, institutions, and galleries. Her notable solo exhibitions include "Even a painting needs a friend" at Galerie Christophe Gaillard in Paris (2022), "Mingle" at Dürst Britt & Mayhew Gallery in Den Haag (2022), "Soft Paintings" at Annka Kultys Gallery in London (2020), "Flat Nature / Surface Bodies" at Foundation Fort Vijfhuizen ( (2017), "Soft Inquiry" at Kansas Gallery in New York (2015), and many more. 

Currently, Rachel de Joode resides in works in Berlin, Germany. 

Rachel de Joode's Art Style

Following graduation, de Joode embarked on a journey with photographs and short films, which gradually transformed into sculptures blurring the boundary between digital representation and tangible objects. Her work embodies an ephemeral reality, presenting surfaces or textures that seem tactile yet remain intangible, as the apparent sculptural materials are actually photographs. By integrating these photographs with real materials, she amplifies the illusion, giving rise to a new form of naturalness born from the interplay of the artificial and the physical.