About Ina Arends
Ina Arends studied painting at the art academy and began her career as an artist in Amsterdam. After several stipends from the Fonds voor Beeldende Kunst, it was time to pack her bags in search of new adventures. A trip on a ship as a chef, then on to New York museums. After a stint in Lisbon, she shuttled between Paris and her studio in Amsterdam for a few years before taking root in Brussels for many years. Interdisciplinary work always had her interest. She produced high-level projects in the design, dance/performance and food design worlds, travelling to Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Paris, Taipei, Kyiv and Madrid.
In search of further depth, Ina worked for a year with a group of people with physical, mental, cognitive and auditory disabilities. Making art, music and fun together. Especially the intense contact touched her deeply. The unique way of communicating caused many hatches to open, which inspired Ina's current development.
Now working in her studio in Rotterdam, Ina does a lot of research into this group of people and their role in art history and our current visual culture. Technological and medical developments mean that people with Down's syndrome are slowly disappearing from society, for example.
Why is this group hardly depicted now and in the past? Is art capable of changing our fixed collective idea about disabilities? In the work of Ina Arends, certainly.
