Didi Lehnhausen is a visual artist based in Amsterdam (NL) who works with paintings, prints, installations, and performances. Her practice navigates the boundaries of traditional mediums—darkroom printing, batik, and painting—reshaping them into alternative methods that respond to environment, body, and matter.

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Working on large surfaces of paper, canvas, and fabric, she works in a ritualistic way, allowing the environment and the presence of people and animals to influence and mark her pieces. Each work goes through a series of ‘treatments’—layering, washing, and manipulation—that transform raw materials into charged surfaces.

During her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (where she was awarded the Fine Arts Prize for best graduate in 2016), she began exploring imagery from Indonesian history—connecting to her Dutch-Indonesian heritage. She developed a distinctive method of making large-scale darkroom prints. This led to her ten-meter-long prints Ten Meters of Evidence, shown at the Neu/Now festival and Art Basel in 2018. These prints brought her to Yogyakarta, where she collaborated with Ruang MES 56 on darkroom performances—painting live on light-sensitive paper—culminating in the exhibition Paper Spirits / Soil Mates at Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam. A subsequent collaboration with a batik workshop near Yogyakarta allowed her to translate these methods to fabric, resulting in the installation Eleven Spells and her presentation We Don't Wear Long Dresses When We Work at Project Space Plan B. A move to Italy in 2023 gave her access to centuries of religious painting traditions and craftsmanship, inspiring a new body of work on raw canvas using rituals similar to her batik and darkroom techniques. Currently she is working on installations of darkroom prints and paintings in dialogue with each other.

Her images emerge from shadowy places and histories—painful legacies woven into blood, the discomfort of functioning within dysfunctional systems, and the complexity of everyday life. Through layered transformations, she explores how ritual, material, and story merge—challenging linear perceptions of time and process, shaping ever-transforming embodied forms.


CV

Education
2012-2016 – BFA, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam.                                                    Awarded the Fine Arts Prize for best graduate.

Residencies
2022 – Two-month residency at Temple, Amsterdam NL  
2021 – Artist in Residence at The Grand, Amsterdam, NL
2019-2020 – Six-month residency, Batik Leksa Ganesha, Yogyakarta, ID
2019 – Three-month residency, Ruang MES 56, Yogyakarta, ID
2018 – Two-month residency, AGA Lab, Amsterdam, NL
2018 – One-month residency, Studio Kura, Itoshima, JP
2017 – One-month residency, Transfer International Ruhr, DE
2015 – One-month residency at Urbane Kunste Ruhr, DE                             2015 – One-month residency at DordtYart, Dordrecht, NL

Exhibitions
2024 – Drops of a Mountain, open studio at Piazza Romboni, Lucca, Italy
2023 – BIG ART at the Bijlmer Bajes, Amsterdam, NL
2022 – ANGELS ARE ALIENS TOO, residency and exhibition at Temple Amsterdam, NL
2022 – AIR at The Grand, exhibition and auction by Christie’s, Amsterdam, NL
2020 – We Don’t Wear Long Dresses When We Work, Mertens Frames Project Space by Plan B, Amsterdam, NL
2019 – PAPER SPIRITS / SOIL MATES, Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, NL
2019 – Paper Traces, Ruang MES 56, Yogyakarta, ID
2019 – Prospects & Concepts, Art Rotterdam, NL
2018 – NEU/NOW Festival at Art Basel, Basel, CH
2018 – For Reasons Yet Unknown, Studio Kura, Itoshima, JP
2017 – KEEP IN TOUCH, Kunstliedering Halfmannshof, Gelsenkirchen, DE
2017 – NEU/NOW Festival, Amsterdam, NL
2017 – Making Waves, Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam, NL
2017 – Matter of Time, De Cacaofabriek, Helmond, NL
2016 – Hesitation, Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, NL
2016 – Ernstig Geschikt, Studio Omstand, Arnhem, NL
2016 – Rietveld UNCUT, De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, NL
2015 – Rietveld Mobility, Urbane Kunste Ruhr, DE
2015 – Performing a Trace, DordtYart, Dordrecht, NL

Publications
2023 – Ancient Eyes With Purple Glasses, artist book, edition of 40
2021 – Brief aan Karel, edition of 35

Screenings
2020 – Online screening and talk, Tempat Kerja, presented by Projectspace Plan B
2020 – Away to Home, supported by AFK
2019 – Screening & performance at symposium Existentie en Zingeving in de GGZ in   collaboration with Professor Jim van Os
2018 – Screening & performance, Art Rotterdam in collaboration with Professor Jim van Os

Stipends & Funding
2023 – AFK Stipend
2020 – Project funding, AFK
2019 – Project funding, AFK
2018 – Mondriaan Fonds Young Talent Stipend


STUDY OF THE STANDING SUN
Installation 2025
Pigments, acrylic, gesso, oilpastels on canvas, 221x788cm
A painting spanning almost 8 meters of wall, made around the winter solstice. The work explores social-cultural routines in Europe and the impact of a changing environment. The ground drawing, inspired by nativity scenes from Italy, is layered with pigments and gestures applied by multiple hands in daylight during last years darkest days. 

SEVEN PLANETS
Installation 2025
Pigments, acrylic, gesso, oilpastels on canvas, 300x285cm, 2024
 Seven paintings created on raw canvas, where layers of pigments, drawings, and paint merge into a unified surface. Gesso is selectively used to divide layers, revealing an internal order within the material. This method, resembling the batik process, reflects on questions on origin and belonging. Whether belonging is tied to one’s place of origin or if it is possible to belong to a place you have never been, but only imagined. 



DROPS OF A MOUNTAIN
Exhibition 2024
Oil on linen

Paintings made during a working period in Italy, between the marble mountains of Carrara and the old paper workshops in Florence. The paintings were at one point submerged in a water bath where strands of oilpaint attached to the linen, a method inspired by the paper marbling tradition. Figures reemerge as layers peel away, revealing cracks or gaps in the surface. Sometimes, the medium's instability causes paint to drip off, exposing linen or erasing the gesso beneath.

RECLINING VENUS
Painting 2023
watercolor and oil pastel on paper, 70x150cm
In 2022 and 2023, I wrote and painted about color. Through color theories, stories emerged about belonging, growing up, and raising children. The publication Ancient Eyes with Purple Glasses brings together these texts and paintings. “Reclining Venus” is one of the paintings featured in the book.
NO NIGHT DREAMING
Installation 2023
Dye pigments beeswax oilstick and pastel on antique bed linen, 275x229cm
This work is part of a series of batik paintings created on antique bed sheets. The piece evokes the fleeting, lucid images of dreams that fade into daylight, especially on nights broken by interruptions. The use of antique linens ties the work to personal and historical narratives of rest, nurturing, and domestic space. The layering of dye, pigments, and oil pastels reflect the blurring of memory and consciousness.

HORNED MARY
Painting 2023
Pigments, Oil, Pastel, acryclics on linen, 164x123cm and 164x164c,
A series of paintings that developed over the course of a year, composed of various layers built up through repeated acts of painting and erasure. During this time-span I attempted to dissect the images presented around me of pregnancy, birth and motherhood.
ELEVEN SPELLS
Installation 2020
Dye on muslin

An installation of eleven batik pieces, inspired by the origins of batik, where symbols and colors represent the dreams or powers of the wearer. The method, developed in a batik workshop, parallels darkroom printing but unfolds at a slower pace. Colors develop in (sun)light, and once revealed and fixed, cannot be altered. Working “in the dark” requires reliance on multiple senses, with weather playing a significant role—sunlight intensity affects color strength, while rain influences drying time and work rhythm.