Tentacle Togetherness

This exhibition at the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France bringing together works produced between 2013 and 2022 is Anouk Kruithof’s first major solo show in France. Designed as an organic ensemble in which images, sculptures, performances and installations coexist, it takes stock of her prolific production in which concepts and emotions merge to create works that suggest another way of looking at the world is possible.

Meet the artist - Saturday 16 September from 3 pm   

Anouk Kruithof pursues an interdisciplinary practice, an unstoppable movement in which intuition meets an accumulation of images, materials and encounters. Advancing in a sprawling fashion, her research follows a network-based logic that indicates areas of study whose borders are in constant movement.

Kruithof takes a particular interest in the relationship between human and non-human elements, the environment and the community, as well as the state of mind of individuals, the abundance of images and how they are used. In other words, diverse themes whose deep-seated connections she sets out to reveal.

This absence of compartmentalisation is often reflected in the hybrid nature of the medium. Sculptures that “sweat” or with “skin made up of photos” and organic or prosthesis-like photographic prints are difficult to categorise and as such challenge accepted definitions. The artist’s polysemous creations encourage us to deconstruct the categories, such as nature, culture and technology, in which our thought processes are grounded and in so doing question what photography and sculpture really mean.

Kruithof’s art often includes an important collaborative aspect. She establishes a group dialogue away from the confines of the studio, sometimes even in the virtual world of the Internet. Within an interpersonal space that is devoid of barriers between participants, her interlocutors contribute to and share in a growing realisation.


Dutch artist Anouk Kruithof was born in Dordrecht in 1981 and currently shares her time between Brussels (Belgium) and Botopasi (Suriname). An internationally acclaimed artist, she has had countless solo shows and group exhibitions all over the world, notably at the MoMA (New York), the Stedelijk Museum and FOAM (Amsterdam), as well as the Centro de la Imagen (Mexico).

In 2020, she presented her work at the CPIF as part of a group exhibition, La Photographie à l’épreuve de l’abstraction. Her latest works include Be like water (2023), Universal Tongue (2018-2021) and Trans Human Nature (2021).

Anouk Kruithof is represented by Galerie Valeria Cetraro (Paris).

Artist’s website: https://anoukkruithof.com


• Public preview

Saturday 3 June at 3 pm 
Free shuttle from Paris at 2.15 pm (Place de la Bastille). Reservation required (contact@cpif.net)

• Meet the artist

Saturday 16 September from 3 pm 
Free shuttle from Paris (Place de la Bastille). Reservation required (contact@cpif.net)


· Acknowledgements

The Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France would like to thank Valeria Cetraro gallery (Paris), Art21 Foundation (Geulle, the Netherlands), Anne-Mieke Reedijk (Bleskensgraaf, the Netherlands) and Luikinga+Schendelaar (Haarlem, Pays-Bas). 


Credits: Anouk Kruithof, So bad, even introverts are here, 2021, sculpture photographique, 180 x 40 x 50 cm, vue de l’exposition Perpetual Endless Flow, FuturDome, Milan, 2021, courtesy de l’artiste et de la galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris