THE ENCOUNTER AND DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC SPACE (2025)
Su Tomesen i.c.w. Imke Ruigrok
In the work of artist Su Tomesen (NL, 1970), the dynamics of the street and the encounter play a central role. Her practice spans installations, interventions, social sculptures, photography and film. Encounters with the other — a person, a country, a custom or a gamelan composition — are at the heart of Tomesen’s relational and participatory art projects, which bring together worlds and subcultures. Originally trained in cultural history and television direction, she went on to study fine arts at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Film projects and artist residencies have taken her to Amman, Belgrade, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Medellín, Port-au-Prince, Rio de Janeiro and Tirana. Since 2011, she has lived and worked between Amsterdam and Yogyakarta.
The street and the encounter
Tomesen has a keen eye for the beauty of the street. In her gradually evolving projects, she turns her gaze to the boundless potential of everyday materials, the resilient and resourceful urban individual and informal, non-Western economies. There, she discerns performances and installations that resemble those of the visual arts. For Tomesen, the idioms of art and life merge in public space: a street sale becomes a performance, a pile of goods a sculpture, and a market stall an installation.
Encounters with the other — on the street, spontaneously, whether across the globe, around the corner or in a supermarket (as in her earlier Syrian shop project), or through collaborations with the public — form a consistent thread throughout her work. The encounter is central to the video installation Street Vendors: Medellín, Tirana, Johannesburg, Yogyakarta (2012–18), an anthology of inventive methods and constructions devised by street entrepreneurs. Another project, Bijlmersymfonie (2023–24), developed during a working period at CBK Zuidoost, brings together encounters and participation across a neighbourhood, housing block and wider community. The skills she developed while co-creating the composition for Parade (see ‘Interdisciplinary and participatory’ below) — experimenting with sound and arranging — proved valuable once again: Bijlmersymfonie was a participatory concert starring residents of a monumental, modernist honeycomb-shaped apartment block, typical of the Bijlmer area, and an arrangement of music from cultures represented in the neighbourhood. The performance was filmed and forms part of the installation Living Building (2024) as a three-channel video.
Interdisciplinary and participatory
Tomesen often collaborates with professionals from the art and film world, such as curators, camera and sound technicians, editors and fellow artists. In her recent projects, these collaborations have become more interdisciplinary and participatory in nature. While realising Bijlmersymfonie and Parade, for instance, she worked with a composer, conductors and musicians, and invited residents and audiences to act as co-creators. In both projects, the medium of sound in public space emerged as a new and enriching element in her work.
The interdisciplinary and participatory project Parade began in Yogyakarta in 2019 with the question: ‘Can you make music from the sounds of the street?’ During the pandemic, Tomesen co-wrote a composition in Amsterdam with composer Sinta Wullur, incorporating street vendor sounds and structured after gamelan music. Its first performance, in collaboration with amateur musicians, took place in 2022 at the Gamelanhuis in Amsterdam. Eventually, the composition will return to the streets of Yogyakarta as a performative parade featuring street vendors and the public.
Tomesen’s installation Hoef van Eden (2023) brings together young and old, plastic and greenery, in a fusion of East and West. This permanent public artwork in De Hoef, Alkmaar, was made possible through collaboration with various partners — including the municipality, craftspeople, Lego builders and a gardener — and through the participation of local schoolchildren. The work consists of a pavilion and bridge with an Asian-inspired design, along with four trees planted by a wadi on school grounds. It incorporates 33,000 second-hand Lego bricks. The design reflects influences from Indonesia, care for the environment, and the importance of green space. The work is a cheerful protest against the problems of plastic, and at the same time a celebration of creative engagement with what happens to be at hand.
Positioning and method
Through observing and engaging with people across the globe, Tomesen recognises the human capacity to inventively shape public space. This sense of malleability — expressed through small-scale, unpolished street dynamics — reveals striking similarities across the world, from Indonesia to Colombia. Tomesen’s working method and observational approach are akin to those of Marjetica Potrč and Francis Alÿs. In her practice, Potrč presents ‘architectural case studies’: makeshift houses mimicking an informal settlement, including stories about the living conditions there. Alÿs, too, engages with cities, streets and human movement: “I see the city primarily as a laboratory. I study how people respond. I collaborate with people living on the streets.” Tomesen: “While filming in the street, ‘being in charge’ as a director clashes with the unpredictability of what unfolds — and that’s something I welcome. Surprising and wondrous scenes are what make the street authentic. As a result, my films move across the registers of visual art and documentary.”
Through her travels and projects, Tomesen seeks — despite vast differences in privilege — common ground and connection with the people she meets. She learns the basics of the local language, does her research, and connects with people. As an artist-entrepreneur, she recognises herself in the improvisational working style of street vendors. She loves their inventiveness and use of materials — their upcycling, their DIY spirit, and their habit of patching things up rather than throwing them away. Her work critiques consumer society.
As journalist Sandra Smets writes, ‘Tomesen’s work is a visual plea for an organic world in which life develops freely. Make room for those who live and survive in the city — not for coffee bars or luxury flats. When you give space to individuals rather than internationals, their capital can flourish, and they themselves can be the developers of their city.’ This resonates with what Potrč shows: that residents often devise solutions that work better than those proposed by urban planners.
Happenings and 30m3__
While her films and photographs offer a window into another world, Tomesen’s social sculptures, interventions and installations draw elements from elsewhere into dialogue with audiences in the Netherlands, bringing different worlds together. Stacks of plastic household items from a dozen countries become wondrous totems; the aesthetics of market stalls, small shops and vehicles take centre stage in an installation or photograph. A striking example is the mobile installation and performance Toko (2014–2019): an assemblage of colourful utensils from Indonesia, all plastic, carefully arranged on a Dutch bicycle. Another work is the intervention Winkel (2016–2018), presented during the festival Into The Great Wide Open: a Syrian shop, modelled on the small, improvised shops that spontaneously appeared in Damascus in the wake of bombings over the past decade. The work featured two Syrian migrants inhabiting the shop, engaging in conversation with festival visitors. No goods were sold over the counter; instead, ‘value’ was exchanged through conversation.
A new work in this vein is Warung Makan (2025): an intervention in the form of a traditional Indonesian eatery, centred on togetherness, sharing and exchange. This relational artwork will be installed in Tomesen’s new studio on Zeeburgerdijk in Amsterdam, bringing together East and West, the street, and a diverse public. Warung Makan also marks the beginning of a series of monthly presentations on the window of her studio — named after the dimensions of the space: 30m3__ (‘dertig meter drie’ in Dutch). Artists will be invited to present work that responds to the space, the neighbourhood, or an existing work by Su Tomesen. This way, her studio becomes a site for presentations, openings, encounters, and shared experiences. Rather than adding more physical objects to the world, Tomesen seeks to share experiences and stories through her happenings, interventions and immersive video installations.
Translated from Dutch into English by Daphne de Sonneville
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THE BEAUTY OF INGENUITY (2021)
Su Tomesen i.c.w. Esmee Postma
In the videos, installations, interventions, social sculptures and photography by artist Su Tomesen (NL, 1970), public space provides her working ground. Observing and in dialogue with her surroundings, she thematizes the human ability to inventively take control of the urban environment. Her oeuvre reads like a visual plea for an organic world in which life develops freely, and at the same time comments on the over-regulated West. With a background as a cultural historian and television director, Su Tomesen completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Sandberg Institute in 2007. Living in Amsterdam, with Yogyakarta as her second base since 2011, the rest of the world is Tomesen's third home. Artist-in-residencies led to various destinations such as Amman, Belgrade, Johannesburg, Naples, Medellín, Tirana and Yogyakarta, and resulted in long-term projects and repeated visits.
For years travellng has been essential to the development of Tomesen's artistic practice. Elsewhere, she encounters new, strange or seemingly lost situations, and people who confront her and lead to new thoughts and new work. In the research phase, equipped with cameras and a notebook, she sets off with an inquiring mind, healthy intuition and a committed attitude. She quickly learns the basics of a foreign language, easily establishes liaisons with people and informs herself about local phenomena and pressing issues. By working patiently once filming, wondrous scenes reveal themselves in front of her camera. During the creative process, she allows the unpredictability of the street to be an active element. In recent years, Tomesen has concentrated on the inventive strategies of the micro-entrepreneurs who determine the streetscape in most parts of the world.
Tomesen feels akin to the - out of economic necessity - inventive and improvising street vendors and sole proprietors. She loves their stalls, shops and stacks, and the mentality to patch things up or reuse them rather than throw them away. As an artist and independent entrepreneur, 'making something out of nothing' is part of her DNA. Despite the differences in privilege, she searches for similarities and common ground with the people who cross her path. As an artist, she builds bridges out of interest - the Latin word 'inter-esse' literally means 'standing between' - in the people she meets. Her work operates on the edge of art and life, and encounters and collaborations often lead to lasting relationships.
She translated the subject of the micro-economy into a growing series of videos, installations, interventions and photographs, culminating in the four-channel video installation Street Vendors (2018-2020). Central to this work is the lively informal economy in Medellín, Tirana, Johannesburg and Yogyakarta, where street vendors, with great inventiveness and resilience, manage to survive day after day, and appropriate public space. The thriftiness and sustainability that characterise many of the trades in the films show the value of waste and the beauty of ingenuity. In her video work, Tomesen is a 'fly on the wall'. The dialogue takes place beforehand with her film characters and afterwards with the spectators.
The installations and interventions take a different approach: they come to life in dialogue with the public. A good example is the mobile installation Toko (2014-2018). In this work, the artist assumes the role of street seller herself with an assemblage of plastic utensils, carefully arranged on a Dutch bicycle after Indonesian example. Here, no distant shores, but various Dutch cities form the stage for a myriad of conversational topics. For some, the installation evokes wonder, for others recognition. The work is simultaneously a cheerful indictment of the omnipresence of plastic and a celebration of the creative use of that which is simply available.
Tomesen's multifaceted oeuvre creates a place for resonance with the world. For example, during the festival Into The Great Wide Open on Vlieland she presented Winkel (2016-2018): a striking resemblance to small businesses that keep springing up in Syria after bombardments. In this social sculpture, nothing was for sale. It meant that the contact between the two Syrian migrants manning the shop and the festival-goers was not limited to an economic transaction, but also involved an exchange of ideas. The Syrians made another appearance when the work was exhibited again two years later. Bringing together these ostensibly incompatible worlds is an important motive for Tomesen. By reframing elements and situations and thus lifting them out of their surroundings into a new context, the familiar takes on an estranging character and generates a moment of confusion that leaves its mark. Her videos and photographs operate on the border of visual art and documentary.
With her 'conversation pieces', the artist raises questions about the organisation of our living environment. She deliberately focuses on the 'have-nots': those who are forced to rely on their own resourcefulness to be self-reliant. She draws parallels between the far corners of the world in search of that universal power. Optimism about the adaptability of mankind in an ever-changing world is the recurrent theme of Tomesen's work, but it also contains an appeal to take care of the preservation of this organic relationship with public space. Subtly, she presents the Western viewer with a different reality. One where time is circular and each day repeats itself like an endless loop, and where what is available is used creatively and the economy is given space to organically form itself in the rhythmic cadence of life.
Her latest research projects, too, are characterised by a sharp eye for the remarkable in the ordinary. Since the beginning of 2020, Su has been working on two new large-scale and long-term projects in the field of sound and community art. (1) In Yogyakarta, she zoomed in on the rhythmic sounds of street vendors who go around the neighborhoods. The sounds form the ingredients for a new musical composition, loosely based on the structure of Javanese gamelan music. The process will result in a parade and a new video installation. (2) In Amsterdam Southeast she is working on the Bijlmersymphonie project. On Sunday afternoon, July 7, music will be heard from various balconies of the Geldershoofd apartment building. Seventeen songs from different cultures, suggested by residents, have been put together into an experimental composition by the artist. The audience can enjoy this musical spectacle in the green courtyard that presents the diversity and solidarity of the Bijlmer. Bijlmersymphonie will be filmed and the resulting video installation is part of an exhibition at CBK Zuidoost from December 2024 to February 2025.
From 2017 till 2022, Su Tomesen's art practice has been structurally supported by the Mondriaan Fund's Stipendium Program for Established Artists.
Translated from Dutch into English by Daphne de Sonneville