Mirjam Kooiman (b. 1990, NL) is an art historian and works as Head of Artistic Programming and curator at Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam.  Mirjam is also co-founder of 'De Kunstmeisjes', an Amsterdam-based collective of art historians. In 2020, Mirjam was part of the Curatorial Advisory Committee, and as such contributed to the selection of artists presented at UNFAIR™.

We meet her in her house, where she admittingly just hung the work by Vytautas Kumza  she bought over a year ago. 

In your professional life, you work mainly with photography. Has this informed your taste in art? Do you also collect paintings and other mediums?

I can’t deny that there’s certainly an occupational hazard at stake. Also because most artworks I own came into my possession through relationships I’ve built with artists I worked with. These are beautiful souvenirs to collaborations that carry a lot of personal value for me, not just in what they show, but also in the memories they represent. Nevertheless, I have a big empty wall in my bedroom that I’m reserving for a painting or tapestry that I have yet to find, or rather that I can afford.

 When you bought it at Unfair, what attracted you to the work Half empty, Half full by Vytautas Kumza?

I happened to be an external examiner during Vytautas’ graduation at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy back in 2017 and I instantly loved his work. Vytautas and I stayed in touch and I’ve been following his developments ever since. But I don’t really have the budget to buy art on a regular basis, so this acquisition sort of happened by chance. I came to the fundraiser of Unfair out of moral support, but I wasn’t planning on buying anything. And there I was, saw his work and couldn’t resist placing a bid. Suddenly, the work was mine!

Vytautas creates his visual illusions very intelligently by hand in front of his camera, yet he allows chance and failure into his constructs. It not only makes his work very playful – through the mistakes he also somewhat reveals the ‘backside’ of photography, and how easily we tend to believe what we see. His works are puzzles to me, it’s an invitation to pause and actually look.

More specifically, Half empty, Half full tempts to make you believe it’s a photograph of a flowing stream, but it’s actually a photograph of a photograph of a flowing stream. It seems to be a play on the notion of depth of field. The work consists of pictures within pictures, frames within frames, and I love how the ultimate surface of the photograph is held together by bulky pieces of ceramics, which seem to be escaping from behind the picture plane rather than framing it.

Where is the work hanging now?

I have to admit it took quite a while before the work got its place on the wall, as I have this irrational fear of drilling holes in my walls. But it finally got a very honorable place in my living room – so far it has the largest wall in my apartment all to itself.

You are one of the founders of De Kunstmeisjes, an online platform connecting followers to the art world. What’s your relationship with art and the digital? Have you ever bought art online or on social media?

I would say that De Kunstmeisjes uses the digital environment to reach people, ultimately to invite them to museums, galleries and fairs to have a physical experience with art. Call me old-fashioned, but I think the physical experience remains irreplaceable. That said, I have occasionally acquired small photographic prints online, but I would be way more hesitant to do so with other media, or with large format photographs. Aside from the more traditional media, I’m very interested in digital art and how photography as a technology is merging with other digital technologies. It completely shifts our conventional understanding of what a photographic image is or can be, and this fascinates me endlessly.