Sjoerd Westbroek

SEPTEMBER 2025

“The two projects I will be working on are about sharing space. First, I will work on making a series of images of the immediate surroundings of the residency. I am interested in that which is normally in the peripheral field of vision, yet determines the experience of space. It is about reading the environment and how I can translate this into the material surface of the image that becomes a space shareable with the viewer. A second track involves an artistic-research project on the possibility of drawing as a dialogic space. This project is more about reflecting on the conditions of artistic work as part of the work process itself.”

Sjoerd Westbroek (NL, 1979) is an artist and educator living and working in The Netherlands. He holds a BA in Art Education and an MA in Fine Art from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and he participated in the residency programme at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. He also completed a BA in Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

“My work, both process and outcome, is about attention. I am fascinated by the question of what it means to pay attention to something.

It is also about relating to place. Through making work, I ask myself where I find myself at that particular moment.
My practice consists of a broad collection of activities – mainly drawing, studying, teaching, writing and collaborating. I do not work from one overarching theme and the concrete subject or a visual motif depends on the situation in which I am working. Sometimes, a personal interest in a place or idea forms the starting point and, through a work, I try to bring others to a question I have.”

The residency of Sjoerd Westbroek was made possible thanks to the generous support of Mondriaan Fonds and Stichting Gerbrandy Cultuurfonds.