Meaningful Artistic Research: collaboration UvH and HKU

Esther Willemse is conducting doctoral research into what art experience is and what significance these experiences hold in awhile walking, listening, and writing person’s life.
While walking, listening, and writing, she gathers stories of art experiences from students and teachers, in order to arrive at a deeper understanding together and to continue exploring their significance for the professionalism of cultural managers.

Read more about her research at hku.nl.

Habiba Afifi explores in her wortk the notion of ‘radical rest’ as an artistic and spiritual mode of inquiry that creates space for more-than-human ways of knowing. Her practice – rooted in ceramics, fertile soil, and speculative fabulation – invites slowness, ecological attentiveness, and co-creation. Drawing on the concept of Al-Barzakh from Sufi cosmology – a liminal space where the soul resides after death and before resurrection – Habiba imagines rest not so much as as a form of personal or political recovery, but rather as a deliberate surrender that disrupts capitalist rhythms in favour of human and more-than-human care, slowness, and relational presence.

At the intersection of artistic research, queer and trans* care ethics, and critical pedagogy, Milo van der Maaden investigates how queer and trans* deviant practices, born from systemic exclusion and resistance to oppressive norms of gender and sexuality, generate critical and creative forms of care and learning. Through participatory methods such as performance and “anarchiving” – an alternative, embodied and shared mode of archiving non-normative knowledges – Milo approaches these practices as pedagogies of care.

In a time of growing societal polarization, Zoya Sardashti investigates how performance and performative methods can contribute to nonviolent, relational forms of dialogue across cultural and linguistic boundaries. Using practice-as-research methodology, autoethnographic inquiry, and Judith Butler’s work on the ethics of nonviolence, this artistic research develops performative interventions that reach beyond rigid identity frameworks. By approaching “translation” not merely as a linguistic act but as a bodily, relational, and performative process, Zoya explores how performance can cultivate sustainable forms of nonviolent engagement in plural, multilingual, and transnational contexts.

Marloeke van der Vlugt investigates the importance of the sense of touch. Her PhD research into touchability in and through art starts with her own artistic practice, in which she explores a tactile creative process using sculptural, unpredictable materials and techniques. She then shares the resulting artefacts, such as polyurethane balls with their mysterious contents of naturally coloured plaster, with the public in interactive performances. At a time when touch is associated with risk and taboo, Marloeke seeks ways to activate tactile sensations.

Simona Kicurovska investigates how digital automation technologies, such as algorithms and AI, are transforming the field of graphic design. She questions what designers can do and what cannot be programmed in digital design systems. Her research focuses on “designer ways of knowledge”, which contribute to socially responsible engagement in times of automated, algorithmic design.

Marielle Schuurman investigates Co-creative Artistic Research Ecologies, which are part of the Creating Cultures of Care programme. In CARE labs, artists and designers work together with residents, clients, professionals, policymakers, students and researchers on questions such as “what does it mean to live with dementia?” or ‘what can music mean for nurses, patients and their loved ones after major surgery? These artistic practices have a significant impact not only on an individual level, but also on the relationships between all those involved. How do new concepts and practices of care and art emerge here?