Welmoet Wartena is a researcher, designer, artist and educator. Her interdisciplinary thinking draws from art and design, geography, ecology and philosophy. She is specifically interested in [a sense of] place, written language and relationality. She focuses on interrelationships between the visible and the invisible (the material and immaterial) aspects of place through text, stories or environments. Her research aims to understand ecological epistemologies to provide new perspectives about the ‘entanglements of place’.
Her artistic research explores the form of the book as means of enquiry. She utilises print, typography, drawing and writing to activate new understandings of alternative modes of knowledge production and meaning making processes. Through dialogical modes her research makes fragments of place tangible and visible. Her work has been acquired by international private and public collections of artists’ books, including the Special Library Collection University of West England, UK.
Welmoet holds a PhD (2024) in communication art and design from the Royal College of Art in London. Her practice-led research critically examines the ‘entanglements of place’ in relation to Dutch contemporary typographic discourse. Her research suggests a theoretical and philosophical concept of an ‘ecology of semantics’. This concept provides an understanding of different aspects of place that impact a typographic discourse through the form of the book. She received the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds: Young Talent Award (2017) and Stichting de Zaaier (2017) scholarships (the Netherlands).
Research Interests
Visual Communication, Visual Arts, Discourse, Place, Space, Entanglements, Ecology, Relationality, Written Language, Epistemology, Materiality, Print Culture, Posthumanism, Interdisciplinary Research, Practice-led / Practice-based Research, Artistic Research, Ecocritism, Geopoetics, Ecopoetry, Poetry, Artists’ Books.
Qualifications
PhD, School of Communication, Royal College of Art, London, UK, 2017–2024
MA Visual Arts: Book Arts, Camberwell College of Arts London, University of the Arts London, UK, 2008–09
BA (Hons) Design in Communication: Graphic Design, Academy of Art Minerva, The Netherlands, 2003–07
Graphic Design and Publishing Design, Cibap, The Netherlands, 1998–2003
Scholarships / Awards
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds: Young Talent Awards, The Netherlands, 2017
Stichting de Zaaier, The Netherlands, 2017
Fundatie van de Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude, The Netherlands, 2008
VSB Fonds, The Netherlands, 2008
Conferences
Rhythm as Knowledge: A Transdisciplinary Symposium
CRASSH, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, 2024
Exhibitions