Photo: Margarida Paiva (video still from performance "Expressive Herd", 2018)

Hans Christian van Nijkerk has been an active performance artist since 2009. Since 2012, neoliberalism has been one of the main topics of his work (meaning things such as competition, competitive sports, testing, the self-help industry, networking and (self) promotion). With his background as a former athlete he has an extensive experience track record on this topic: pushing yourself until you’ve reached your limit, the discomfort of receiving differential treatment based on your performance – not on who you are as a person, being the center of attention and competing for applause for example. Artistically this has led to performance works where his audiences have been encouraged to participate in various warm-up exercises used in athletics (“The Public Vs The Performer”, “The Active Audience”) or more absurd challenges in making vocal sounds to specific physical gestures - a type of conducting – or being challenged to laugh or cry better than the artist. (“Public Display of Emotion”) It has also led to a video series consisting of an athletics match (“Winners of Loss nr 4 – The System”), a video diary of an athletics boot camp (“The Athletics Training Camp”), the music video “På Trening” and a video portrait of Bergen and Bergen as a bicycle city during the world cycling championship (“Winners of Loss nr 11 – Deviation Starts Here”). Immersing himself with neoliberalism has resulted in the artist putting a stronger emphasis on collaborating (the complete opposite of individualism and the competitive mentality) with other artists in recent years. Collaboration partners such as: Hiroko Tsuchimoto, Ljubov Katerli, Cornelia Glitsch and Håvard Nyhagen Henriksen. Since 2015, van Nijkerk has shown his work in 11 countries. He has organized performance art events and exhibitions as a member of PAB and BLOKK and has received grants from Arts Council Norway (2013 and 2018) and working grants from Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond (2016-2018).


https://vimeo.com/hanschristianvannijkerk
http://www.kerkart.com/