Bio
Paoletta Holst (she/her) is an artist and architectural historian based in Brussels. Her practice operates at the intersection of different disciplines to investigate the social, historical and political dimension of architecture and the urban environment. Her work is based on artistic/architectural research, and adopts different media, such as writing, mapping, photography and film, which translate into presentation methods that use forms of scenography and performative lecture to activate and contextualize exhibited images and objects.
Since March 2022 she is a PhD candidate at Ghent University, department of Architecture and Urban Planning. Her PhD research focuses on late colonial architecture and domestic cultures in Java, Indonesia, through an artistic mobilization of the ‘colonial archive’. She was an associated researcher at the a.pass Research Center in Brussels (2022-23), a Research Associate at the Research Center for Material Culture (2020-22), and artist-in-residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in (2016-17).
In the recent past she has been working with different people and in different formations on projects around the colonial history of Indonesia. In 2019 she participated in the 900mdpl biennale in Kaliurang, Indonesia, resulting in the publication What Bungalows Can Tell (Onomatopee, 2021) co-authored by Mira Asriningtyas and Brigita Murti. Together with Paolo Patelli she developed an archival research project rethinking the ‘logic’ of the colonial Tillema Collections resulting in the workshop program Menyunting Arsip/Editing the Archive at Gudskul, Jakarta (2022), an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (2022) and an artistic film/documentary (forthcoming 2024).
With Rob Ritzen she founded That Might Be Right an artistic and socially engaged organization dedicated to researching, developing and supporting alternatives to the present. She is a founding member of Level Five, Brussels. From 2017 till 2021 she taught history and theory of architecture and urbanism at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture and from 2018 till 2021, she worked as text and image editor for the online platform Archined.
Press
October 2024 / Exhibition review on ‘Circulate – Photography Beyond Frames’ by Edo Dijksterhuis, titled ‘Ver voorbij een printje in een lijst”, published in Het Parool
August 2023 / Exhibition review on ‘Style Congo. Heritage & Heresy’ at CIVA, by Justin Agyin, titled ‘Een nieuwe blik op het archief: Art Nouveau herijkt’, published at Archined
https://www.archined.nl/2023/08/een-nieuwe-blik-op-het-archief-art-nouveau-herijkt/
May/June 2023 / Exhibition review on ‘Style Congo. Heritage & Heresy’ at CIVA, by Robby Fivez, published in De Witte Raaaf no. 223 https://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/style-congo-heritage-heresy/
November 2021 / Book review What Bungalows Can Tell, by Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen, titled ‘Verhalen over koloniaal erfgoed: de bungalows in Kaliurang (Indonesië)’, published at Archined
https://www.archined.nl/2021/11/verhalen-over-koloniaal-erfgoed-de-bungalows-in-kaliurang-ind
October 2021 / Book review What Bungalows Can Tell, by Pauline K.M. van Roosmalen, titled ‘Erfgoed heeft vele vaders, de bungalows van Kaliurang’, published at Indies Tijdschrift, No. 2, October 2021
Contact
Paoletta Holst
mail (at) paolettaholst (dot) info
instagram – @paolettaholst
Level Five
Rue Gabrielle Petitstraat 6 1080 Molenbeek
www.levelfive.brussels
instagram – @levelfivebxl
Website design
Website design by
Dirk Reimes
Font design ‘Combine’ by Julie Patard
