About

November 2023, Photo taken while torch glass blowing in her studio

The border she grew up on made her question, how do stories shape our identity? Therefore she started to study International Relations at the Rijks University of Groningen and TUKS university in South Africa. After working as a journalist, guide, media specialist and teacher for various organizations, she wanted to research the relation between language and the material world. She wondered: How does our voice and breath shape our bodies and the (material) world around us? She continued studying art and design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, focussing on glass blowing. She combines her glass works with food, art and science. She went for an exchange to the School for visual theater in Jerusalem. For her graduation work she got selected by the external committee in Rietveld (Re)viewed. Next to that she won the Overduin art prize and won the Re-Use-Me challenge by Leerdam glas museum en Make Eindhoven.

Her work includes 4D works. In the form of audio, performance, short films, spoken word poetry and sculptures. She works with edible and drinkable materials, metal, wood, glass. She expresses herself with open, communicative, poetic illustrations and she writes. In that she like to analyse phenomena. Next to mixed media art, she has a main focus on glass art, especially blowing glass. She develops workshops, educational programs and exhibitions.

Eva van der Zand (1989, Nijmegen), was born in the landscape of the border between the Netherlands and Germany. This green border inspired her to draw information and stories from ecology and biology. How is the language of ecology shaped? How does it influence our perspective and behaviour? How can glass support a growing process?

She sees fragility everywhere around her, in the landscape, in organisms and humans. This made her attracted to glass as a material. Her eyes behold a fragile perspective. Just as many other eyes in this world. She is intrigued by working with glass since it is a material that supports our human eyes to zoom in (photography/microscope lenses) and zoom out (telescopes). Although, a lens is also quickly scratched, damaged, or broken. This fragility she wants to use as a focus to tell stories.

With her work she wants to have an impact on rethinking how materials/objects are used, how we relate to our surroundings and how our perspective on identities are shaped by (fragile) stories. Therefore, she started a tiny border gallery on the border. She co-creates with bio based materials. Her installations are always an invitation for a conversation.

In her practice she works with embodied knowledge and linguistics, with the confronting and comforting aspects of it, Co(n)mf(r)orting. She uses aspects of an interrelational art practice. This comes together in the Botanical Milk bar. Next to that she started an artistic research location on the border named www.themoraine.org. She offers place for artists and designers to come for an artist in residency to have a space to reflect and get new inspiration. There she started various maker's collectives. She is fascinated by group processes and relating in an aesthetic way. Her latest project is "The Breathing Glass house" where she captures the heat while she blows glass to grow plants. What can queer ecology teach us?

September 2022, whistling on glass flute during The Moraine Research Weekend