Rabea Ridlhammer

Rabea Ridlhammer, born in Duisburg in 1990, completed a BA of Art and Design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and an MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute (ArtEZ). She has since been active as an artist, cultural organizer, graphic designer and educator. 

In her collaborative and research-based work, she often engages with trivialized practices, positions and visual languages including cuteness, gossip, comedy, miniatures and craft culture. Working in a variety of media, the independent or collaborative processes result in drawings, publications, printed matter, small objects, short films, garments, installations, performative moments, lectures or soirées. Her interest in inviting and showing the work of others was sparked during her studies in Amsterdam, when she co-founded the off-space bunker0621 in an abandoned bunker in the forest, hosting clandestine performances, exhibitions, workshops and concerts. This still regularly plays a role in her work, which she often uses to connect to other makers as well as friends and family. 

Since 2021 she has been working with dramaturg Felicitas Arnold on the longterm collaborative project CH3RIX, which dealt with the double connotation of the sweet - both a feminized aesthetic category (cuteness) and a flavour. CH3RIX was first developed as a joyful performance tasting-soirée for the Oval Office Bar of Schauspielhaus Bochum, and later adapted with MFA students who visited the seminar “Art&Bad Taste - Finding Pleasure and Power in Minor Aesthetic Categories” at the Zurich University of the Arts. The project came to a close with the artist book “Pleasure, Power, Praliné”, riso-printed at and published by Oreri, a risograph printing workshop and publishing initiative by DAI alum Luca Carboni and Andrea Garcés. The book was launched during a final event at Makroscope in Mülheim an der Ruhr, with performances, an exhibition, a piemonte-cherry peepshow in a chocolate cave, screenings, a concert and curated cocktails.

Rabea has taught in the BA program at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, and was a teaching assistant in the Master Fine Arts at the ZHdK in Zurich. Next to her practice, she currently works, surrounded by artists’ books, at PrintRoom in Rotterdam and coordinates RietveldTV, a monthly 12min TV show from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, curated together with a group of students from various departments.