Art Lab and Artist in Residence

They were the first artists in residence. In 2017, theater maker Lucas De Man and his artists' collective New Heroes stepped into the bank with an open mind. These curious thorns in the flesh went in search of the human behind the system and were themselves surprised and touched as a result.

With a moving podcast 'The Poetry of Banking', a sparkling 'Art Show', and a highly personal theater performance 'Sam', came very close to the soul of the bank employee - and all of us.

Photo: © Sanne Donders

Growth and Shrinkage, or rather our fascination with growth and how to turn that around to a desire for shrinkage. That is the research area of Arne Hendriks. For over a year, he had a workplace in the bank. From there, he made podcasts and interviewed Peter Hein van Mulligen, Marleen Stikker, and others for a newspaper on growth and shrinkage. But he also organized a nine-course dinner with only white cabbage to explore the mechanisms of value and food waste.

Since the opening of the exhibition space in Depot van Boijmans Van Beuningen, Arne has been working on his project 'Outgrowing Eames' one day a week.

Photo: © Sanne Donders

The residency of Daan Rosegaarden was kicked off by an inspiration dinner in his studio, followed by expert sessions within the bank, at Springtij on the Wadden Island of Terschelling, and conversations during the World Economic Forum in Davos. On those occasions, Rosegaarde asked questions such as: what is the price of clean air? In the end, Studio Roosegaarde developed GROW, wonderful light recipes of red and blue light for the places that feed us. “Light as activation, as a place of imagination, but also as a platform. How can we make that farmer a hero again? How can we contribute to the future of our landscape?”

Photo: © Sanne Donders

Artist, philosopher, and scientist, but Koert van Mensvoort is foremost a tightrope walker. He prefers to take several positions at the same time. He wants to be in the thick of things, with his head in the clouds, his feet on the ground, and his hands in the mud.

As an artist in the Rabo Art Lab, his balancing talent was put to the test. Van Mensvoort introduced the eco coin, an alternative coin that rewards sustainable behavior. He uses the coin to link ecology and economy and to ask the question: what is value?

More than three hundred colleagues had the econ coin app on their phones and tracked their sustainable behavior. The eco coins saved could be exchanged for sustainable products or experiences. "The valuable conversations with bank employees were a pleasant surprise for me; they shared their thoughts, and discussed very fundamental issues such as value, responsibility, and reward."

Photo: © Sanne Donders

For two years, artist and cartographer Karlijn Kingma traveled the world of money. At first, without any knowledge, but with great curiosity and wonder, she got to know the little cogs in the wheel and managed to bring the system to life as a waterworks in one map. Painstaking work for which she read lots of books, spoke to many experts within and outside the bank, made sketches, and finally worked on her drawing for more than two thousand hours.

"Money is a public affair that only very few people understand," Carlijn says. "We see it as a law of physics, as a domain of bankers and economists, but forget that it is a social system that was created by humans and therefore can also be changed by humans."

Meanwhile, The Waterworks of Money is hanging in residence at the bank and has sparked many discussions and dialogue sessions about that money system. In 2024, Carlijn's work will be on view in the exhibition space of Rabobank in Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Photo: © Sanne Donders

As a photographer, Henk Wildschut tries to keep his work as free as possible from fads. He likes to take a distance from his subjects so that patterns become visible.

Wildschut photographs with a clear, quasi-clinical, unromantic view. His visual language is informative and could be described as down-to-earth. His choice of subjects is highly driven by personal motives: he often finds himself in places where people have fallen between two stools, where he aims his lens at things that may be contrary to what the broad audience would like to think.

As Artist in Residence, Henk retraces the route to the area where he grew up: the Veluwe. "The farming world intrigues me. The farmer believes in something and now has the feeling that he is not understood. I can often identify quickly with that feeling. And try to look at it from another perspective, maybe even a contrary one." As an artist, Wildschut is an outsider, but because of his youth and the polemics, he has also become a participant. Like all of us, actually.

Photo: © Maaike Engels

In this podcast series in seven episodes ( and growing with editions called Tussenruimte LIVE), Godelieve Spaas - Lector New Economy at Avans University of Applied Sciences - enters into talks with fifteen pioneers who are in the space in between art and business. By thinking from that place, they come up with proposals for an economy that is shrinking, where money can disappear, in which all profits are given away, or where plants and animals have a voice.