Co-funded by the
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Creative Europe Programme
of the European Union
Merel Smitt (Netherlands, 1987) graduated as a director at the Institute of Performative Arts in Maastricht in 2014 and she received her master’s degree at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam (2019). The Rotterdam based artist builds immersive installations and creates interventions in the public space that interfere with our daily lives. You can come across one of her projects in situations or settings where you don’t expect art to happen. They vary from fictional campaigns and score-books to role playing games.
Merel Smitt“Using the realm of the public space and my everyday life as a stage plus collaborating with non-artistic fields generates the freedom to not solely depend on the known production structures in the art field, but allows me to find non-capitalist forms of creating in which the artist is fully in charge of their own artistic practice and the outcome is always influenced by the process. My work can therefore always respond to the actual context and is constantly moving and collaborating with fluctuating circumstances to be able to take place at all times, wherever I am and whatever the circumstances are. We could do it right now. ”Merel Smitt
Merel researches, exposes and questions political and social systems within our society. In her work the audience participates in various ways. By activating the participants, they become aware of the way frameworks, norms and expectations (produced by these systems) influence our environment, behavior and interactions. Her projects can be seen as methodologies to rethink protests and social movements, occupy spaces, raising voices and setting something in motion by finding ways to react to these political and societal topics together.