Alexandra Crouwers (NL, 1974) is a visual artist and artistic researcher operating at the intersection of ecological collapse, digital mediation and speculative fiction.
Crouwers’ work engages with the emotional and existential dimensions of environmental crises through a range of media such as experimental short films, digital sculptures, installations, tapestries and sound. Her practice traverses the liminal space between virtual and real-world dimensions, acting as an interface that links current events to deep histories and imagined futures.
Online projects
Peer-reviewed multimedia publication in the Research Catalogue database for VIS, Journal for Artistic Research issue #6, themed ‘Contagion’, edited by Anna Lindal. ‘The Plot, The Compositor, and Mourning/Mistakes’ was awarded second place for the SAR Prize for Excellent Exposition 2021. The exposition takes the visitor through the first years of my PhD trajectory.
Visit exposition (opens in new window)
Since March 2021, I have been experimenting with NFTs (non-fungible tokens) on Tezos – an energy friendly alternative to more well known blockchains. NFTs provide a partial solution to issues of authorship, ownership, and validation that come with digital (art) files.
NFT-related projects include a\terHen, ‘Who is Online? Game Art in the age of Post-NFTs‘ (VirtualHEK, curated by Anika Meier), ‘Echoes of Life‘ (Cali Institute of Fine Arts, Colombia, curated by Diane Drubay/Blueshift), ‘Down the Silicon Meadow‘ (online and live in Office Impart, Berlin, curated in collaboration with Blueshift), ‘FeralVerse‘ (Feral File x theVERSEVerse, a collaboration with poet Victoria Chang), ‘Unsigned‘ (by Operator and Anika Meier: ‘Unsigned’ is a collection of 100 signatures from women and non-binary artists created to reverse the current negative value of the signatures through their transformation into artworks themselves: “The addition of a woman’s signature can devalue artwork to the extent that female artists are more likely to leave their work unsigned.” – Dr. Helen Gørril in The Guardian, 2018).
In the Summer of 2019, I applied for an artist account on the Giphy platform, which serves as an aggregator for .gif animations that users can display on their social media posts, such as on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
At the time, I worked on a series of ultrashort animations, ‘Fundamental Mechanics’, which were assembled with .gif stickers using the Instagram Stories feature. Unhappy with the available vocabulary, I began to modify elements from my previous works into the .gif sticker format so I could add them to my ‘collages’.
On August 4, 2019, I uploaded my first batch of 20 .gifs. One of which was a unicorn, that was part of one of my earliest designs for a woven tapestry I had been working on as part of the 16th century project.
This .gif gathered 31.027.385 views between August 4, 2019 and May 21, 2020. “A view is counted every time a GIF has been served through GIPHY’s services or technology. A single view is counted when a GIF is served, regardless of how many times it loops. A GIF view on GIPHY is a sign of relevance, share-ability, and popularity.” – Giphy. By May 2020, my contributions had 195.1 million views in total.
At that time, I deactivated my account out of protest against the pending takeover of Meta of the platform. In the Summer of 2024, when Meta was ordered to sell the platform, I reinstated my account. The total view count currently (February 2025) stands at a bit over 324 million views.
Crouwers is in the process of finishing her artistic PhD, ‘Summoning a Forest‘ (2019-2025), at the Associated Faculty of Arts of the University of Leuven and the LUCA School of Arts in Brussels. The research focuses on the interaction between her virtual studio and the devastation of a family forest affected by a climate-induced bark beetle infestation.
Her interdisciplinary approach bridges artistic practice, ecological thinking and digital fabulation, opening up new ways of processing, mediating and imagining responses to the environmental crisis.
Recent exhibitions include Museum Ludwig (Budapest, HU), Museum M (Leuven, BE), and Technische Sammlungen (Dresden, DE). She lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium.
What’s up
‘Hydromedia: Seeing with Water‘, November 23, 2024 – March 16, 2025, Museum for Technology, Dresden (DE). With Mirja Busch, Alexandra Crouwers, Tim Theo Deceuninck, Sascha Herrmann, Mariko Hori, Arja Hop & Peter Svenson, Jarek Lustych, Jiajia Qi, Alina Schmuch, Sanne Vaassen, Meng-Chan Yu and Luiz Zanotello.
‘Unbound Dialogue‘, January, 2025, a research exhibition and symposium (January 31) on digital art and perception by Michiel Willems in Lovenjoel (BE). Works by Alexandra Crouwers, Daan Couzijn, Canek Zapata, Rodell Warner, Estelle Flores, Mathias MU & Marnix Van Soom. Talks by: Flavia Dzodan, Frank Maet, Jan Verpooten, and Michiel Willems.
‘Down the Silicon Valley‘, January 23 – June 26 (online on common.garden) and February 1 – 7 at Office Impart, Berlin (DE). With Afroscope, Alexandra Crouwers, Bianca Shonee Arroyo-Kreimes, Cezar Mocan, CROSSLUCID, Nathaniel Stern, Yoshi Sodeoka. A project by Office Impart & Blueshift.