About

At first glance, the paintings and drawings of the Dutch-born artist Karenina de Jonge can be
described as figurative. However, her work is not focused on depicting an existing reality,
but on constructing one. Drawing on her everyday surroundings, current events and
personal observations, are constructed as visual narratives. At the same time, her work
contains recognizable references to Western art history and mythological tales. The viewer is
invited to view these narratives from a different perspective and to reconsider existing
interpretations.

When Karenina graduated from the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts – now the Willem de
Kooning Academy – in 1984, she left immediately afterwards for a nine-month stay in
Madrid. There, at the Museo del Prado, she studied, amongst other things, Francisco de
Goya’s Black Paintings and works by El Greco and Velázquez. Goya’s work is and remains a
major source of inspiration in her oeuvre. She is particularly fascinated by Goya’s ability to
depict the horrors of war and social injustices from a position of personal engagement. In
this, he distinguished himself from his contemporaries, who mainly produced morally
uplifting works.

During Karenina’s time at art school, the art world placed a strong emphasis on abstract and
conceptual art. Her stay in Madrid brought a shift towards a figurative-conceptual approach.
She became increasingly interested in the way images are perceived and interpreted. The
role of the viewer as an active participant in the viewing process is a recurring theme in her
work. Illusion, trompe-l’oeil and perspective were initially key starting points and were later
interwoven with questions about current affairs, image formation and framing. How is
reality constructed, and how can this be made visible or deconstructed?

After winning the Royal Grant for Free Painting and being named a laureate of the European
Prize for Painting in Ostend (B), her work was selected and exhibited in various group
exhibitions in galleries and museums in the Netherlands and abroad. In the Netherlands, for
example, she has exhibited at the Rijksmuseum Twente, Museum Aemstelle (group
exhibition), Panorama Mesdag (solo) and, amongst others, at the Grand Palais and Galerie
Nèsle in Paris (group exhibitions) and in Ostend, and has held solo exhibitions in Lisbon in
1996 and 1998, where her work was also displayed in the Dutch Pavilion at EXPO ’98.
After 2002, Karenina made a conscious decision to obtain her teaching qualification. Since
2005, she has been working as a lecturer in art history at the Willem de Kooning Academy
and has been carrying out freelance work for Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. These
activities encouraged her to delve deeper into art history, and she went on to study at
Leiden University, where she completed her Master’s degree in Art History and World Art
Studies in January 2012.

Due to her work in art education and her academic studies, she was less active in her artistic
practice. She creates drawings, collages and watercolours, but it was difficult to combine this
with an active artistic career. At the same time, her teaching practice and museum work
allowed her to deepen her theoretical understanding of her interest in perception,
interpretation and the various ways in which a work of art acquires meaning. Her master’s

research focused on the gender-related categorisation of installation art. She studied
feminist, postcolonial and queer theory. 

Having stepped away from her work in education and the museum sector, Karenina has
resumed her artistic practice and continues to undertake freelance art-related projects for
museums and institutions. She is reflecting on her artistic practice and wondering how,
armed with new insights, she will reshape it. In her current work, she combines elements
from her earlier body of work with a contemporary visual language in which everyday life,
current affairs and art history converge from various perspectives. 

In her recent installations, the viewer takes a center stage more than ever. The viewer
becomes a participant and forms performative part of the installation. In addition to
paintings and drawings, Karenina also creates 3D works, which form part of the installation.
The visitor/participant contributes to the meaning of the work. There is no fixed starting or
ending point; the work develops as a continuous, spiral-like process in which perception,
interpretation and participation converge within conceptual frameworks, which are then
deconstructed in turn.