Bio

Ruchama Noorda is an artist who uses diverse media and materials in performances and installations. In 2002 Noorda graduated at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and she completed her MFA at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2004. She received a PhD degree from University of Leiden where she researched the early 20th century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement.

In her practice Noorda recycles elements of Reform pedagogy, arts, crafts, dance, diet and ritual practices in performance and installation works that both engage and challenge contemporary communitarian and counter-cultural aspirations, practices and beliefs. By highlighting the mystical and magical elements within the Reform tradition along with other undigested and ‘irrational’ material her works perform a séance-function- excavating, the repressed and buried histories within the Modern in ways that set out to complicate hard and fast distinctions between progressive and conservative social and artistic movements.

Exhibitions and performances have been hosted by Marres, Maastricht (2022), Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam (2022), Garage Rotterdam (2021), Nest, the Hague (2021) Galeria Municipal do Porto (2019), Mediamatic (2019), Paradiso (2018), De Appel (2016), De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2015), Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2015), High Desert Test Sites, Wonder Valley, California (2014), Marres, Maastricht (2013), Stadhausgalerie/Kunsthalle Münster (2013), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2012) Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden (2007) and  Museum Het Domein, Sittard (2003).

Biography:

Ruchama Noorda is an artist who uses a variety of media and materials in performances and installations. Noorda graduated with a BFA from the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague  in 2002 and went on to complete her MFA at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2004. She was awarded the Stroom Stimuleringsprijs (the Hague) in 2002, and the Hermine van Bers Prijs (Leiden) in 2007. In 2015 she was awarded a doctoral degree in the PhDArts program from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) at the University of Leiden for research undertaken into the early C20th Lebensreform movement.

She has had residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada (2011); Künstlerhäuser, Worpswede (2013), University of California, Santa Barbara (2014, 2017), Oote41221 Artist Residency, Matsumoto, Japan (2019) and Kolkata Art and Research Residency, India (2019). Noorda has given lectures, artist talks and performances at the following institutions:  Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary, Canada;  ArtEZ, University of the Arts, Arnhem, University of Amsterdam (Artistic Research Group), Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam (Cure Master program); University of California, Santa Barbara (Art Department); University of California, Los Angeles (New Genres), Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (Masters Artistic Research)

Exhibitions and performances have been hosted by Marres, Maastricht (2022), Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam (2022), Garage Rotterdam (2021), Nest, the Hague (2021) Galeria Municipal do Porto, Portugal (2019), Mediamatic, Amsterdam (2019), Paradiso, Amsterdam (2018), De Appel, Amsterdam (2016), De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2015), Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2015), High Desert Test Sites, Wonder Valley, California (2014), Marres, Maastricht (2013), W139, Amsterdam (2013), Stadhausgalerie/Kunsthalle Münster (2013), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2012) Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden (2007) and Museum Het Domein, Sittard. (2003). Her work is in the following public collections: Museum Het Domein, Sittard; the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and Deutsches Tanzarchive in Köln.


Ruchama Noorda (Leiden 1979) is een kunstenaar die gebruikt maakt van diverse media en materialen in performances, beelden en installaties. Noorda is afgestudeerd aan de Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in Den Haag (2002) en het Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam (2004). In 2015 promoveerde zij, als een van de eerste Nederlandse kunstenaars, aan de Universiteit van Leiden met een beeldend onderzoek naar de vroege 20e-eeuwse Reformbeweging. Haar werk is de afgelopen jaren onder andere te zien geweest bij Marres in Maastricht, Nest in Den Haag, de Oude Kerk, Mediamatic, Nieuw Dakota, Paradiso en de Appel in Amsterdam, Galeria Municipal do Porto in Portugal, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, High Desert Test Sites in Wonder Valley, Californië, Stadhausgalerie Münster en Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden.