Willem de Rooij (b. 1969, Beverwijk, The Netherlands)
Since the early 1990s, Willem de Rooij has created temporary installations that analyze the politics of representation. Versed in time-based media, he uses montage to combine appropriated objects. De Rooij collaborates with leading academics, initiating research in global art history and visual anthropology. His work is marked by closely edited publications and a select corpus of precisely crafted objects.
A member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Willem de Rooij teaches at the Städelschule (Frankfurt) and Rijksakademie (Amsterdam). He co-founded BPA// Berlin program for artists in 2016. Awards and residencies include the Bâloise Art Prize (2000), Robert Fulton Fellowship at Harvard (2004), and DAAD Fellowship in Berlin (2006). With Jeroen de Rijke (1970–2006), he represented the Netherlands at the 2005 Venice Biennale.
Recent exhibitions include Lumiar Cité (Lisbon), Centraal Museum (Utrecht), Akademie der Künste (Vienna), Portikus (Frankfurt), Performa Biennial 2025(New York), 17th Jakarta Biennale, and 10th Shanghai Biennale; his work is in collections such as MoMA, Centre Pompidou, and Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź.
“There is a degree of self-reflexivity in my work. There is a feedback loop between the archive and the works. All works are family, and when a new work is made it’s going to have to be able to live with all the others and they are all going to inform each other… It’s a network.”
—Willem de Rooij in conversation with Sophie Springer, “Colonizing the Exhibition Space,” Fillip, Issue no. 18, Spring 2013
