Marika Vandekraats ~ Keywords: settler colonialism, extractions, archival, strawberry, birling, digging

Marika Vandekraats (she/her) is an artist from the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, also known as Vancouver, Canada. Her research focuses on the human entanglements tied between nature and capital to frame extractivist processes that have irreversibly affected the climate. Her work takes shape through video, sculpture, text, and performative installations that utilize archival research to challenge its context. Currently, this process takes shape through a collaborative publication about the strawberry, bringing attention to its colonial history and its exploitative present. Vandekraats regularly collaborates with friends in performance, video, and workshops to form solidarity and collective resistance against structures of oppression with the exaltation of friendship. 

Since 2023, Marika has been organizing a nomadic library called Reading Room Rotterdam. RRR is working in partnership with London based publisher Pluto Press and is a part of a larger network of Reading Rooms located in cities across the UK. The library functions as a gathering agent for communities to entangle with one another, and for knowledge to be disseminated. Through public events and the library service, the RRR offers an exchange of mediums of knowledge, be it through shared dinners, workshops, gardens, or text.