A cut destroys before it constructs: it opens an image so that something else can take shape. Van Gool uses the cut as a means of deconstructing expectations, narratives and gazes. She works largely with existing images drawn from fashion, erotica, advertising and the archive across different photographic processes, collage, installation and video. Whether vintage or recent, these images carry cultural and historical weight. She considers them the material of expectation: they show how something or someone is supposed to be seen.
Viewers bring along, often unconsciously, their own cultural, historical and other inherited ways of looking. Van Gool’s work skews those expectations and in doing so, brings them to the surface. The female body forms a common thread in her practice. The works operate through a calibrated play of seduction and disruption. The appeal of the source image stays intact, while the reading it was made for is withheld: figures become anonymous, objects fragmented and landscapes unstable. They bring suggestion and imagination back into images that were meant to be declarations.
Van Gool approaches the material from within, as someone formed by the same image culture. Her dual formation, in image-making and in the historical, political and economic conditions that determine the meaning of images, allows her to work with these images both as material and as cultural objects.
Bio
Alida van Gool (1986) is a Rotterdam-based visual artist working across printed image assemblies, installation and video. She holds a degree from the Fotoacademie Amsterdam (2023) and a BA and MA in Arts and Cultural Sciences from Erasmus University Rotterdam (2012).
She has exhibited across the Netherlands at Huis van de Fotografie Rotterdam, Pennings Foundation, Garage Rotterdam and Art The Hague, among others, and her work has been included in international publications including GUP New Talent, Der Greif and Fresh Eyes. Three of her works are held in the collection of Stichting Droom & Daad. Her work is supported by CBK Rotterdam and het Cultuurfonds.
Exhibitions, events & publications (selection)
- We Are Dreamers (group exhibition), Ballon Rouge Gallery – 23 May till 14 June 2026
- Al-Tiba9 ISSUE21 Print Magazine (publication spring/summer 2026)
- Codrico Factory @ Rotterdam Art Week (group exhibition) – 27/28/29 March 2026
- Rotterdam ART Week @ VLAK – 76x32x32_200x85x360 (group exhibition) – 27/28/29/30 March 2025
- Grote Nederlandse Kunstkalender 2025 (publication)
- Art The Hague, Fokkerterminal The Hague – 2 till 6 October 2024
- Pennings Foundation (talent wall exhibition, performance & artist talk), June 1 till August 2024
- Rotterdam ART Week @ Borgerstraat (group exhibition) – 2 till 4 February 2024
- New Chapters (group exhibition) – 19 November 2023, Huis van de Fotografie Rotterdam
- Where am I going? (and will you help me figure it out?) (solo exhibition) – 14 & 15 October 2023, Huis van de Fotografie Rotterdam
- Art The Hague with: The Land Behind The Mirror (stand 5) – 4 till 8 October 2023, Fokker Terminal The Hague
- Sublieme Minimale Vormtaal (group exhibition) – 23 September, ICOON Hoek van Holland
- ON REPETITION (group exhibition) – 28 July till 13 August 2023, Garage Rotterdam
- North Sea Jazz / Hudson Art Department (group exhibition) – 7 till 9 July, Ahoy Rotterdam
- Past & Present: 15th Anniversary DER GREIF Münich (group exhibition) – 16/17/18 June 2023
- Haute Photographie 2023, Rotterdam ART Week (group exhibition) – 8/9/10/11/12 February 2023, Keilepand Rotterdam
- BLACK SANDS, Rotterdam ART week (group exhibition) – 9/10/11/12 February 2023, Huis van de Fotografie Rotterdam
- L’oeil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography 8 February 2023 (2 publications)
- PF Magazine #8 2022 (publication)
- Kiekiekrant Art Edition december 2022 (publication)
- FRESH EYES 2022 (publication)
- GUP New Talent 2022 (publication)
Education (graduated)
- Conceptual Imagery, Fotoacademie Amsterdam
- Arts & Cultural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam (BA + MA)
Grants
- het Cultuurfonds, Ontwikkelbijdrage (2026)
- CBK Rotterdam, Praktijkbijdrage (2024)
