Born 1981 in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, Anouk Kruithof is a visual artist. She lives and works between Brussels Belgium, the Netherlands and her wooden house in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest in Botopasi Surinam.

Her multilayered, transdisciplinary approach encompasses photography, sculpture, installation, artist-books, text, performance, video, animation, websites and (social) interventions in the public domain. Kruithof’s work explores a ‘contemporary schizophrenia’ which can be seen as an indelible mental disease of contemporary life. By continually navigating between the digital and physical experiential sphere, Kruithof investigates a collective state of mind that is not solely grounded in the material world, but more and more often in the relentless flow of images in an amorphous digital world. She contemplates a world consisting of a relentless stream of edited, constructed, spliced-together images that have lost their credibility: reality today is thoroughly scripted and subject to permanent post-production.

Her work depicts the transience and the chaos of this world, which the artist skillfully addresses by mixing urgent societal issues with personal experiences that simultaneously represent this state prevalent in our society today. Kruithof tries to reveal ‘the nerves of the time’ by deftly identifying social, psychological and ethical dilemmas. Observing, analyzing, collecting, acting and reacting inform her playful and personal work method, which does not at all detract from her serious approach as a social and political agent; the personal has become political in this time and Kruithof formulates a highly personal and idiosyncratic view of this world.

The scope of her world view extends from environmental pollution and the consequences of global warming to government surveillance practices, privacy to  protest, and anonymity to signs of nervousness such as stress and exhaustion, shame and social discomfort, all in an effort to address a collective consciousness of human failing towards planet earth, at large.

Kruithof is acutely aware of her double role as image maker and image consumer. Her paradoxical relationship to the medium (as maker and receiver, but also manipulator and manipulated) informs her work in several ways. Performances, sculptures, publications, videos and installations: they are all part of Kruithof’s attempt to bridge the gap between physical human experience and how this is expressed or depicted in the digital world. Kruithof highlights the dissonance between the gravity of the situation and the often aestheticized and fleeting manner in which it is presented and unthinkingly circulated in cyberspace. Just like the visual culture in which we live, her work method is heart-warming and revealing, personal and universal, uplifting and oppressive, light-hearted and dystopian. This paradoxical layering, which characterises both the medium of photography and the human individual, forms a common theme that runs throughout her work (extracts from text by Hinde Haest).

Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions such as: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Folkwang Essen, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; TATE London, Kunsthaus Vienna, FOAM, Amsterdam, VOO?UIT, Ghent Belgium, MBAL Switzerland; The Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen China; Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg; Culture and Arts Center, Daegu Korea; Capitain-Petzel Gallery, Berlin: KIT (Kunst Im Tunnel) Düsseldorf; Temporare Kunsthalle, Berlin, Autocenter Berlin; Fotoforum, Bolzano, Knochkdown Art Center, New York, bitforms gallery, New York,  ICP, New York; Capricious Gallery, New York, Higher Pictures Gallery, New York, Museum het Domein Sittard, the Netherlands; Escougnou Cetraro gallery, Paris,; The Netherlands Photo Museum (NFM), Rotterdam; MARCA Museum Catanzaro, Italy; MAMAC La Boverie, Liege Belgium, among others.

Anouk Kruithof’s work was selected for The Gallery of Honour of Dutch photography at Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam in 2021 and she was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize in 2019 & Cinekid Media Award in 2018 and won the public prize of the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunstprijs in 2016, the Meijburg Art Commission in 2015 and won in 2014 the Charlotte Köhler Prize in the Netherlands. She has also received an Infinity Award of the International Center for Photography in New York in 2012 and the Jury Grand Prize of Festival International de Mode et de Photographie in Hyères in 2011.

Her works are included in public collections such as; SF MoMA San Fransisco, Het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Winterthur Switzerland, Museum Folkwang Essen, Museum Voorlinden Wassenaar, Aperture Foundation New York, Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA), Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam, Museum het Domein Sittard, FOAM Amsterdam, MBAL Le Locle Switzerland, Pier24 library San Fransisco, Ioannis Christoforakos Collection (ICC)  Athens/Munchen, MOMA library New York, ICP library New York, New York Public Library, Grimmuseum Berlin, Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken NL, VU Amsterdam, Menzis, KRC, AMC, ART 21, DOK, NFGV, Meijburg, Robeko + several private collections.

In addition to her art practice Anouk Kruithof also writes, lectures, gives workshops, teaches, curates, and participates in social projects.  She is co-creator, director and jury member of The Anamorphosis Prize, which awards $10,000, no strings attached, to the creator of the best self-published photo-book from the previous year. The prize was launched for the first time in spring 2015 and celebrated 3 editions.