Roosje van Donselaar (1986, Haarlem) makes sculptural work that emerges from material investigation and historical research working in tandem – driven by fascination with how humans create meaning across time and cultures.
She works intuitively with materials, currently clay and gold, allowing them to reveal their possibilities through making. Parallel to this tactile process, van Donselaar digs into stories: myths, legends, rituals, forgotten practices, what different cultures elevated or dismissed. The research fuels the work, but the work refuses singular interpretation – it plays with meaning rather than fixing it.
Clay as earth – residue of all that has lived. Gold formed only through dying stars. The combination insists on connection across a small planet where we inflate our differences despite shared cosmic origin. Van Donselaar celebrates this: the strange wonder of existence, the inventiveness of human storytelling, the beauty of what ancestors created to understand their world.
Each project investigates what gets forgotten, what endures, what deserves elevation. Undervalued things receive the same treatment reserved for the sacred. Van Donselaar plays with that wonderful absurdity, creating space where new rituals and old magic coexist, where forgotten stories get rediscovered and mixed up, where the monumental and the intimate trade places.
Her practice celebrates the accumulated beauty and strangeness of how we all got here.
Currently on show at
Exhibitions
2026
Affordable Art Fair (Amsterdam, NL) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
Affordable Art Fair (Hamburg, GER) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
Open Days – Nibourg Interieurs (Zwolle, NL) represented by ART[s] Gallery
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
Design Museum Gent (Gent, BE)
CAN Art Fair Ibiza (Eivissa, ES) represented by Newhouse Gallery
Affordable Art Fair (Berlin, GER) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
MAD Brussels (Brussels, BE) represented by Connie Hüsser
Open Days – The Vicarage (Bathem, NL) represented by ART[s] Gallery
2025
Affordable Art Fair (Hamburg, GER) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
Aap Noot Brood (Rotterdam, NL)
Museum Cobra (Amstelveen, NL)
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL) represented by De Galerie Den Haag
Open Days – The Estate (Noordwijk, NL) represented by ART[s] Gallery
2024
Birdhouse (Basel, CH) represented by Connie Hüsser
Open Days – The Estate (Noordwijk, NL) represented by ART[s] Gallery
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL)
2023
POSITIONS Berlin Art Fair (Berlin, GER)
Handmade (Rotterdam, NL) represented by Elle Decoration
KunstRAI (Amsterdam,NL)
Art Rotterdam (Rotterdam, NL)
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL)
2022
Art Rotterdam (Rotterdam, NL)
MAD Brussels (Brussels, BE)
ART-O-RAMA (Marseille, FR) represented by FRACAS
KLEI (Gouda, NL) represented by De Firma
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL) represented by 99 uitgevers
Stichting Kunsttraject Amsterdam (Amsterdam, NL)
Big Art (Zaandam, NL)
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL)
2021
The Frozen Fountain (Amsterdam, NL)
This Art Fair (Amsterdam, NL)
OBJECT (Rotterdam, NL)
Big Art (Zaandam, NL)
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL)
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL)
2020
The Dirt (Schiedam, NL)
Affordable Art Fair (London, UK) represented by Chiefs & Spirits
OBJECT (Rotterdam)
Big Art (Zaandam, NL)
2019
Dutch Design Week (Eindhoven, NL) represented by Broeinest Baars & Bloemhoff
The Others Art Fair (Torino, IT)
RC Art Fair (Rotterdam, NL)
Design Miami (Basel, CH) represented by Connie Hüsser
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL)
Art The Hague (The Hague, NL)
2018
KunstRAI (Amsterdam, NL)
Education
2011-2014
Cursus Ambachtelijk Schoenmaken, Dutch HealthTec Academy, Utrecht, NL
2011-2013
Internship Framing and Restoring, Ateliers Frans de Roo, Haarlem, NL
2006-2010
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Department VAV – moving image, Amsterdam, NL
2004-2005
Utrecht School of the Arts, Utrecht, NL