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![Whispering bodies: scores for the we]( "Whispering bodies: scores for the we")
infoPerformance that tells a story about the search for collectivity, the joys and frictions of shaping a ‘collective body’, visualizing the intangible relations.
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![Risking entanglement]( "Risking entanglement")
infoA site-specific installation and training ground where we exercise interdependence and rehearse ‘suspension’, not as a way of escaping modernity but as a method of resistance)
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![Garden of suspension]( "Garden of suspension")
infoSpatial design of the garden to slow down, rest and repair. Suspension bridge that connects room and garden through the window.
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![Whispering bodies: scores for the we]( "Whispering bodies: scores for the we")
infoPerformance that tells a story about the search for collectivity, the joys and frictions of shaping a ‘collective body’, visualizing the intangible relations.
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Video work proposing a workshop in water with astronauts for the ASE Planetary Gathering. Film credits: Yavor Minchev
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![Mother-of-Oil]( "Mother-of-Oil")
infoProps for a lecture performance about shells and Shell.
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![Mother-of-Oil]( "Mother-of-Oil")
infoLecture performance about the colonial history of oil extraction in Indonesia.
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![Mother-of-Oil]( "Mother-of-Oil")
infoRelational map presenting the visual research about the entanglement of Royal Dutch Shell, VOC and shell trade on a light table.
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![How on Earth?!]( "How on Earth?!")
infoVideo work pitching a workshop in water with astronauts for the ASE Planetary Gathering.
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![How on Earth?!]( "How on Earth?!")
infoVideo work pitching a workshop in water with astronauts for the ASE Planetary Gathering.
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![Unearthed]( "Unearthed")
infoAuditive installation presenting more-than-human perspectives on geo-engineering.
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![Unearthed]( "Unearthed")
infoFuture fossil presenting more-than-human perspectives on geo-engineering.
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![Typographic Herbarium]( "Typographic Herbarium")
info4 part silkscreen series presents the symbiotic typeface »Graphis Scripta«. Each design of the »Typographic Herbarium« highlights a different aspect of the typeface, and visually bridges the themes of ecological mourning and lichen through the use of variable font styles.
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![Solastalgic stone]( "Solastalgic stone")
infoCommemorative stone with engraving reading »Solastalgie«. Solastalgia is the feeling of homesickness due to environmental changes although one is still at home.
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![Workshop on ecological grief and lichen]( "Workshop on ecological grief and lichen")
infoTwo-part workshop that familiarized participants with lichen and facilitated conversations about climate emotions.
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![Rememberance Day of Lost Species]( "Rememberance Day of Lost Species")
infoPoster for a workshop on ecological grief and lichen, facilitated on the Day of Lost Species 2022.
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![Moving words: a body glossary]( "Moving words: a body glossary")
infoVideo essay that researches how meaning is created through the body, becoming an archive of the research process and gestures that hold us together.
Carmen Draxler is een visueel onderzoeker en ontwerper met een diepe overtuiging voor collectief reparatie.
Haar praktijk beweegt zich tussen kunst en design om affectieve verhalen te vertellen die de verwikkelingen van kolonialiteit, kapitaal en klimaatverandering kritisch onderzoeken. Door middel van visueel onderzoek, performance en collectieve praktijken houdt ze zich bezig met klimaatgevoelens, feministische ecologie en de impact van olie-infrastructuur. Ze onderzoekt de vervreemdende oorzaken en omstandigheden van het Antropoceen en gebruikt visuele narratieve figuren die dominante verhalen uitdagen om ruimtes te creëren voor betekenisvolle verbinding en radicale zorg.
Ze maakt deel uit van en is medeoprichter van het op onderzoek gebaseerde artistieke collectief TogetherTogether. Ze is alumni van het Non-linear Narrative programma aan de KABK in Den Haag en heeft een bachelor in visuele communicatie van de Bauhaus Universiteit in Weimar. Ze heeft gestudeerd en gewerkt in Duitsland, Canada en Nederland.
Websites
Research-based artistic collective on the intersecion of visual art, performance, and social work, driven by the need of resisting the alienation of living in an individualistic society.
togethertogether.space/Social media
Maakt deel uit van Kunstenaarsinitiatief / Collectief / Broedplaats
TogetherTogether Collectief
Lid van Beroeps- / Kunstenaarsvereniging
Typografische Gesellschaft München
Curriculum vitae
Opleidingen
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2025 - 2025Choreografie School for New Dance Development
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2023 - 2025Non-linear Narrative Den Haag, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Diploma behaald
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2020 - 20212023 Concordia University Montreal
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2018 - 20232025 Bauhaus University Weimar Diploma behaald
tentoonstellingen
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2025Afstudeershow 2025 Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag, Nederland During the graduation show 2025, a spatial installation, performance, video essay, and workshops presented the research project »Practical proposals of what-might-be« on collectivity, interdependence, and suspension. It was the first time a collective of five graduates presented one unique graduation work at KABK. graduation.kabk.nl/2025/carmen-draxler Groep
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2024Archival F(r)ictions Nationaal Archief Den Haag, Nederland Group exhibition showing archival research projects that trace, question and shift colonial narratives encoded in maps and cartography. »Mother-of-Oil« was presented as lecture performance and auditive installation. Collaboration with Nationaal Archief, Den Haag. issuu.com/kabk/docs/_unmapping_territories_-_master_non_linear_narrat Groep
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2024Over duurzaamheid en regeneratief onderwijs Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag, Nederland Groep
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2024Undercover Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag, Nederland Group show in the framework of the Second General Assembly at KABK, presenting the lecture performance »Mother-of-Oil« and material samples of plant dyes. Students, management and staff gathered to discuss the responsibility of artistic practices in times of multiple crises, demanding institutional commitment to ecological care. Groep
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2024Lichenologie conferentie Havraníky, Tsjechië Group show on the socio-political effects of (technological) infrastructures. Exploring journalistic methods to visually research carbon migration, the auditive spatial installation »Unearthed« critically traced corporate narratives around climate solutions. Groep
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2023Entanglements T12 Weimar, Duitsland Solo exhibition presenting the design research project »Entanglements« on ecological grief and lichen. The exhibition hosted fluorescent lichen prints in a dark room, a stone carving showcasing a symbiotic typeface, process pieces, and presentations. Solo
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2022Growing Materials Universiteitsbibliotheek Weimar, Duitsland Groep
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2022Taal is macht Openbare ruimte Weimar, Duitsland Solo exhibition presenting 10 typographic posters in public space that challenge prejudices against gender-sensitive language. The interactive installation empowers people to actively confront linguistic discrimination and shows that it is in our hands to change language. Collaboration with Diversity Office, Bauhaus University. The Hague Solo
projecten
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2025
Practical Proposals of What-Might-Be Royal Academy of the Art, The Hague Den Haag, Nederland graduation.kabk.nl/2025/carmen-draxler As artists and researchers, we are often asked to define an individual practice. But what happens when the practice is collective? »Practical proposals of what-might-be« responds to a society shaped by modernity and coloniality, where individualism is prioritized. In this context, coming together is a politicized experience for which we propose a language that suspends our belief and involvement in exploitative structures. The project exhibits an ongoing research into collective care through public gatherings and interventions, and unfolds in three interconnected pieces, a site-specific installation, a performance and a video essay. This project is both a proposal and a question: a space where we suspend productivism, reclaim agency, imagine futures, and ask what if? Collective work of TogetherTogether.
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2025
Collective Repair—Stitiching a Social Fabic of Care Royal Academy of the Art, The Hague Den Haag, Nederland 2024 »Stitching a Social Fabric of Care« is master thesis about collective repair as a form of community care. In conversation with repairers from Spinozahof and the Feminist Needlework Party, I researched the character of the social relations that emerge from the manual act of repairing objects together, expanding the notion of repair beyond the material layer. Through recorded conversations and feminist theories, I describe collective repair as an ethical framework of care and examine its potential to bridge difference, social alienation and polarization by building lasting connections and encouraging embodied learning. Collective repair contributes to sustainable, self-organized communities as it fosters mutual support and reclaims participation which challenges hierarchical structures and envisions care as a central organizing principle in society; gesturing towards commoning. The thesis is accompanied by an audio piece documenting the recorded conversations, and a series of photographs zooming-in on the manual labour and collective care of repair.
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2024
2023 Nationaal Archief Den Haag, Nederland »Mother-of-Oil« is a research project that traces the colonial roots of the Dutch-British oil company Shell. By following the stories of seashells from Indonesia, the audio-visual installation displays a relational map of archival material that reveals Shell's entanglement with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Like tulips, seashells were highly coveted commodities in the 17th century that captivated many wealthy Europeans and became a symbol of power and prestige—a symbol that is now the logo of the global oil empire Shell. Before extracting oil, Shell's predecessors sold trinket boxes adorned with seashells from the Indo-Pacific. By reimagining a seashell box as carrier bag for displaced landscapes and distorted images, »Mother-of-Oil« seeks to disrupt colonial narratives and highlight how the commodification of marine life became a template for fossil capitalism. The work is activated through lecture performance.
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2024
How on Earth?! European Space Agency Den Haag, Nederland By floating in water, we invite astronauts and space dreamers to drift beyond the constraints of colonial imagination. The video work extends a call to the European Space Agency (ESA) to join us in a pool where floating becomes a method for caring space ethics—as a chance to reimagine our place in the cosmos and build futures on more humble and caring relations. Through performance, movement and conversation, floating and weightlessness, we seek to escape the technological imaginary that have shaped the planetary and extraterrestrial exploration. The video work experiments with storytelling for a feminist speculative fiction of space. It is a reminder that space is not a blank canvas for human ambition but a shared environment. The video work was developed during the Moonshot ‘24 programme of ESA to propose a workshop on space ethics with astronauts for the next ASE Planetary Gathering. Collective work of the AstroHydroFeministSuperWitches.
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2024
Unearthed Royal Academy of the Art, The Hague Den Haag, Nederland With »Unearthed« we look at the Dutch geoengineering project PORTHOS at the Port of Rotterdam. As a quick-fix for climate change, existing oil pipelines are currently transformed into an infrastructure to compress carbon emissions from port industries into the sandstone of depleted oil fields offshore. This technology is known as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Regarded as an inevitable tool by the Dutch government to meet national climate goals, we ask who really profits from this expensive and short-lived technology. To bring the capitalist agenda of the project into view, »Unearthed« maps the public discourse around CCS and gives voice to the more-than-human realm. On a site of speculative archeology, visitors can listen to the stories of three future fossils that challenge human exceptionalism and surface our deep entanglements with the North Sea. Collective work with Laura Flethe.
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2023
Entanglements Bauhaus University Weimar, Duitsland »Entanglements« is a design research project that aims to visualise the climate emotion of ecological grief. To understand the complex grief experienced in response to environmental losses, »Entanglements« looks at the remarkable life of lichen, offering inspiring teachings of the possibility of species coexisting symbiotically on a damaged planet. The parallels between lichen and ecological grief offer an emotional approach to the climate crisis and reveal new scopes for action. On this journey into a new epoch , the Symbiocene, we are accompanied by the eco-psychological reader »Kriecht« that serves as an experimental toolkit to understand climate emotions. Additionally to the reader, the research project encompasses a workshop, a process book, the typeface »Graphis Scripta« presented on stone and biofluorescent prints—all of which was brought together in a solo exhibition.
Internationale uitwisselingen / Artist-in-residencies
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2024Floating University Berlin Berlin, Duitsland Artistieke residentie in het kader van de tweede ronde van het programma »Free Radicals« in de openlucht Floating Learnscapes. Gericht op zelfgeorganiseerde studentengroepen om interdisciplinaire praktijken of onderzoek te implementeren buiten de muren van de instelling, en zich bezig te houden met dringende zaken van onze tijd: noties van ecologieën, solidariteit, politiek en sociaal engagement en zorg voor onszelf en onze omgeving. Deelgenomen als onderdeel van Strudeling Collective. floating-berlin.org/programmes/learnscapes/ls-24/free-radicals-2024/
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2024Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes Colditz, Duitsland Zomercursus literatuur en sociologie met als onderwerp »De onwaarschijnlijkheid van het einde«. We gaan in op de sociale en esthetische kwesties van eindes, afsluitingen en beëindigingen die centraal staan in de crises van de afgelopen jaren: Denk aan het ›einde‹ van de pandemie, kapitalisme en globalisering en de onvermijdelijke uitputting van natuurlijke hulpbronnen. Aan de hand van actuele en historische voorbeelden onderzoeken we de vraag waarom het gemakkelijk is om het begin van dingen te zien en moeilijker om het einde te zien.
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2023BlackStar Studios Inveremere, Canada Werkte als grafisch ontwerper en verkoopmanager voor de galerie en kunststudio BlackStars.
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2022Burg Giebichenstein Halle, Duitsland Residentie in design en artistiek onderzoek. Artistiek onderzoek kent een immanente kennis toe aan de wereld van de dingen, of het nu gaat om alledaagse voorwerpen of kunstwerken. In de werkgroep "The knowledge of things" gefaciliteerd door Anja Neidhardt vragen we ons af of designproducten ook sporen zijn van cognitieve processen. Wat is dan de rol van designonderzoek? Hoe kan een onderzoeksgeoriënteerde ontwerppraktijk traditionele paradigma's in design uitbreiden? Kan kritisch designonderzoek emancipatoir potentieel naar het designmuseum brengen? www.burg-halle.de/artikel/a/artistic-research-forschen-an-dingen
publicaties
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2025Graphis Scripta Boek Slanted Publishers Scholarship for students in the fields of Art Karlsruhe, Duitsland www.slanted.de/product/slanted-experimental-type-3-0/
Recensies
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2021Student's Public Poster Installation Highlights Gender-Inclusive Language Website Weimar, Duitsland www.uni-weimar.de/en/university/structure/central-university-facilities/equal-opportunity-office/newsletter-archive/texte-newsletter/summaery-2021-students-public-poster-installation-highlights-gender-inclusive-language/
Prijzen en stipendia
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2023Beurs voor studenten op het gebied van kunst Stipendium der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes Weimar, Duitsland Beurzen die de artistieke praktijk tijdens het onderwijs ondersteunden
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2020Mobiliteitsverhogende beurs DAAD - German Academic Exchange Service Weimar, Duitsland Beurs voor een academische uitwisseling van een half jaar naar Canada