Life After Rietveld and Sandberg: Building a Sustainable Artistic Practice
On Thursday 22 October, Life After Rietveld and Sandberg will be hosted by Clem Edwards (Head of Jewellery – Linking Bodies, Rietveld Academie), together with Karin Iturralde Nurnberg (alum Fine Arts, 2020) and senakirfa A. (alum TXT, 2022).
During this session we will zoom in on building an artistic practice in the years after graduation. We use the word sustainability to indicate an artist's capacity to maintain and to nourish their practice. What can an art practice look like in its first 5–10 years after graduation, and how is it funded? Does thriving in your practice mean thriving in body and spirit? And what does community have to do with it?
The session offers a chance to learn directly from alums as they share their real-world experiences of entering the professional field after graduation.
Thursday 22 October 2026
17:15h - 18.45h
Theory Stairs, FedLev Building
Register here!
The session will be held in English at the Theory stairs in the FedLev building. The space is accessible for wheelchair users. It will not be live-streamed, but a recording will be shared afterwards on the website.
About
Clem Edwards (Head of Jewellery – Linking Bodies, Rietveld Academie)
Clem Edwards (b. Naarm Melbourne) works across language and sculpture. Their work brings into conversation the possibility of the glittering dream castle and the deep knowing that the Disney story cannot exist without the labour, gender and land conditions that produced it. They’re the head of Jewellery–Linking Bodies, artist and co-editor of The Material Kinship Reader and co-founder of the DAI Friends & Alumni Grant.
Karin Iturralde Nurnberg (2020, Fine Arts)
Karin Iturralde Nurnberg (b. 1992 Guayaquil) works with storytelling, performance and sculptural installations. She graduated from the Fine Arts department at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, and lives and works in Amsterdam. In her practice she embraces improvisation and the power of spontaneous performative and sculptural interventions, to re-arrange the world around her. Her work has been shown, among others at CAC, Quito, W139, Amsterdam, Systema, Marseille, MAAC Guayaquil, Open Reykjavík. She is part of artist run space WILLIE in Zaandam. In 2025 she was nominated for the Sybren Hellinga Keunstpriis Award.
senakirfa A. (2022, TXT)
senakirfa A. is an interdisciplinary artist and poet(ic learner), from and based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A.’s work across installation, sculpture, writing, sound, and zine-making, is an extension of A.’s poetry practice, through which she centres what she terms poetic in(ter)ventions: an amalgam signifying what African-Diasporic worldmaking ushers in. A. has exhibited, performed, and read at Raven Row, Felix Meritis, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, OSCAM, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Baby Reni Foundation, and more. She has organized collective reading and poetry gatherings, including (syntax) to Become: an ongoing Reading exercise <> Collective Read, at Metro54, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
A. deeply fosters the thinking that she has been able to share, and simultaneously the continuous making that unfolds together with Bobbie Müller, Jung Yeon Kim, Phantom Wizard, and S*an D. Henry-Smith.
Life After Rietveld and Sandberg
Together with the departments, Rietveld and Sandberg organise a series of monthly sessions to prepare students and recent graduates for professional practice after their studies. By inviting both experts and alums, the series aims to give participants a clearer idea of what professional practice they aspire to and what their first steps will be after graduation. The programme is open to Rietveld and Sandberg students as well as alums who have recently (less than 5 years ago) graduated.
This series is initiated and organised by Public & Projects Rietveld Sandberg.
Did you miss the previous sessions? You can find the recordings here!
Credits campaign design: Cleo Tsw
Tape design 2026 – 2027: Ivy Karunadasa (alum Graphic Design Rietveld Academie 2026)