Martha Jager
Martha Jager (DAI 2016) is an artist and curator based in Amsterdam. Martha's artistic and curatorial work, which exist as two strains of the same practice, is invested in personal histories, emancipation and language as a form of representation.
Through performance, text and textile, Martha's visual work straddles the borders of the private and the public and the ordinary and the epic. By abstracting personal documents such as calendars, diaries and to-do lists through narration her work investigates subjective feeling and experience as the micro product by which societal normatives and complexities can be laid bare. Often taking place outside of designated presentation spaces such as through the intercom of her apartment, within a private home, or visible only through the windows of a neighbouring shop or office, her work has been part of group shows and programs at De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, De Vishal, Haarlem Can Felipa, Barcelona and The Lumberyard, Marfa, Texas, amongst others.
Her interest in the private domain, the epistolary form and offsite presentations are also at the base of the programs and projects she curates for experimental poetry and literary center Perdu in Amsterdam. She is the initiator and co- curator of Dear, a postal series which connects poets, writers and artists to an audience by the means of the written letter.
Excerpt from Martha Jager's 20 minute presentation Half-Figure for Speaking Without Thumbs - DAI's 3 day lecture-performance marathon, July 2016
Learn more about Martha Jager’s written MA thesis (DAI, 2016): Concerning Verticality
In 2017 Martha returned to DAI as the coordinator of MAELSTROM SLOW DANCE and in 2020 as respondent to the Kitchen.
Follow Martha's "Life after DAI" through her website and instagram