Artist’s statement
Cultural history—and the ways we represent and inhabit the world through artistic interventions—has long been central to my work. Over the years, I’ve explored subjects that reflect on art and design practices, engaging with the genres of still life and landscape, as well as decor, abstraction, and pattern. I am particularly drawn to the expectations and ideologies that underlie these aesthetic forms.
More than forty years ago, I began working with the architecture found in early Renaissance painting, constructing life-sized, three-dimensional structures inspired by those pictorial spaces. This led me to consider how architectural space shapes contemporary experience—how it frames the body, whether overtly visible or only implied. These concerns continue to inform my practice across painting, drawing, and, most recently, ceramics.
I draw imagery from my own photographs, printed matter, and internet sources, translating them through processes of manipulation and juxtaposition into new compositions that propose reconsidered meanings. Through this, I intend to question visual conventions and expose the layered politics embedded in form and space.
My ongoing interests centre on the politics of space: who owns it, who occupies it, and how we, as individuals, define and negotiate our private and public identities within the environments we inhabit.
Biography
Born in the Netherlands, Renée Van Halm immigrated to Canada as a young child. She currently lives and works in Vancouver, after extended periods in Toronto, Montréal, and Berlin. She studied at the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) and holds an MFA from Concordia University in Montréal.
Van Halm has exhibited widely, with over 50 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows, including Making Space (Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2020), Form Follows Fiction (UTAC, Toronto, 2016), The Poetics of Space (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2015), New Monuments Forget the Future (Birch Contemporary, 2015), and international exhibitions in Sydney and Tokyo. Her work is held in public and private collections across Canada and internationally.
A founding member of Mercer Union, Toronto’s artist-run centre (est. 1979), Van Halm has also made significant contributions as an educator. She taught at York University before joining the faculty at Emily Carr University, where she is now Professor Emerita. Her work is represented by Equinox Gallery in Vancouver.