THE PERFORMATIVE POWER OF MATERNAL METAMORPHOSIS IN CONTEMPORARY ART
(2025)
author(s): Yvonne Grul
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Fine Arts
In this thesis, I explore the phenomenon of maternal metamorphosis in the context of performance art. It looks at the lived experiences of mothers against the light of the radical changes they face, altering their form and way of being. This can be under the influence of natural or external events, such as death and the passing of generations or having to deal with the maternal consequences of political forces. It also considers portraying a mother as something or someone else through performance and play with literal and figurative meaning. Maternal metamorphosis can be portrayed in terms of metaphor, like ‘the mother as intangible heritage’ as an image for the metamorphosed deceased mother. Expressing maternal alterations metaphorically by performance can lead to growth and change, and contribute to the broadening of maternal representations and experiences within visual art.
Standing on the Stage of Convention : Critical attitudes in visual art seen through metafiction
(2025)
author(s): Iver Uhre Dahl
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Fine Arts
In this thesis insight from the discourse on metafiction, a mode of writing which breaks and exposes the conventional frames of literary fiction, is used to analyse works of visual art that show a similar criticism towards the conventions of their medium.
Rubberneckers
(2025)
author(s): Joana Dos Santos Almeida
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Fine Arts
This Thesis is comprised of a series of chapters, which combine personal observations and analysis of existing theory and literature regarding the concept of trauma within the artistic context.
Throughout the text, I explore the choices and intuitive origins of the artistic practice with reference to my own experiences and connect them to my interest in the
traumatic.
Using Griselda Pollock’s writings on Trauma and art as a foundation, I explore the theoretical sides of trauma and how it operates, specifically that of psychoanalytical, scientific and philosophical texts. I aim to weave connections between the act of observation inherent to the artistic practice and the same spectacle associated with violent subject matter. This becomes the basis for the development of what I call, the ‘traumatic method’, which involves my ongoing research into this relationship.
Questions of affect and embodiment become key components of this thesis in regards to the function of using trauma as a conceptual starting point during the artistic process. Specifically the importance of re-enactment and treating the traumatic as a medium within itself rather than simply
subject matter.
One Must Imagine the Camera Rolling
(2025)
author(s): Luca Serafini
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
B.A. Fine Arts
In this research I probe the insides of the camera as a surveillant apparatus. I argue that a camera is not a passive object but rather an entity with agency in space. Questions will come up such as what is the existential condition of the camera? Has it seen too much? How does it feel to roll for eternity in hopes of witnessing an event which might take place over a single frame? Is this obsessive drive materialized as a black dome in a state of despair or bliss? What will be the view from the end of times when the last camera stands still? If the eye-lens is a mediator between exterior and interior and it has agency in our imaging of reality, but cameras and computer vision don’t really sense in images, what are we gazing at and what are they gazing at?
We will get started by coming up with definitions, dissecting the camera apparatus, addressing its correlations with our eyes, tracing a paralel between surveillance and religion in chapter 1. Chapter 2 sharpens the foreground with New Materialist and Media Archeological lens – a sort of macro into its circuits and raw materials. Rotating the focus ring to chapter 3, our eyes turn to a collection of letters addressed to different surveillance cameras I have encountered. Chapter 4 removes its lens, the camera laid bare to a high-powered laser as a novel practice of intra-action. A telescope lens is then attached to the camera in Chapter 5, and we’ll look far into the edges of our time. Finally, a global shutter attemps to scan the whole image with concluding remarks, and fails.
Love : a gateway drug
(2025)
author(s): Lui MacRae Wolstencroft
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Fine Arts
This thesis explores the theory that love can act as ‘a gateway drug’ and if so, a ‘gateway’ to what exactly? ‘Being in love’ is a complex condition which induces a number of psychoactive responses in the brain these affect all parts of the body, including the DNA. These chemical reactions within the brain are comparable to those involved in drug addiction, as both stimulate the reward pathways in the brain. This thesis reviews the chemical processes which mirror the responses of other pleasure stimuli and mimic the brain chemistry patterns of drug addiction. The study also explores how developing technologies can influence ‘love’ and how these are affecting human evolution and the reproductive drive. I conducted this research in order to inform my artistic practice. The process of writing here has given me a foundation of knowledge which can be transmuted into my artistic process.
La Domenica
(2025)
author(s): Giovanni Pilato
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023
BA Fine Arts
This Graduation Research Project is a script for a catholic Mass. It consists of two
main parts: La Domenica and La Predica (translated from Italian: The Sunday and
The Sermon).
The text and design of La Domenica are based on the handout people receive at the
start of the catholic Sunday Mass in Italy. In La Domenica you can find the scriptures
of the day, the prayers to recite, some general information and relevant quotes for
the day. In this first part I assembled some biblical and non-biblical texts together
with pre-existing prayers and self-written prayers. The texts vary in topic such as the
story of the creation, the passion of Christ, but also Notes on Camp. The content of
those texts is then reflected upon in La Predica. It is therefore advisable to read La
Domenica first, up until The Sermon, and continue with La Predica. After La Predica
the reader can get back to La Domenica to finish the Mass.
La Predica is the script for the sermon: A personal essay on the relationship between
the Catholic traditions and Camp aesthetics. La Predica is a contemporary reflection
on the scriptures which starts with the creation. This story then leads to art creation,
matters of taste and homosexuality in Art. Homosexuality and erotica are then
related to the scene of the passion of Christ, specifically to suffering and death of
Christ as scenes for arousal. The theatricality of Catholic visual tradition is then
analyzed through Susan Sontag’s Note’s on Camp. What follows is a comparison
between queer visual culture, thus Camp, and Christian tradition.
Institutional Fallacy
(2025)
author(s): Yannis Androulakis
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Fine Arts
Through this paper and while focusing both on the heritage and institutional attitudes of documenta, I attempted to underline the linkage of the institution to modernism and its neoliberal mode of being. I pursued the latter by highlighting the initial nationalistic and supranational format of documenta. Then and while using a comparative methodological attitude towards documenta and Greece’s “historico-political” context, the text addressed the institution’s inability to escape the power structures of its foundation, and thus its imposition to the Greek state. The former analysis was formed while deploying certain key-informations in regards to the diptych power/knowledge by Michel Foucault and philosophy of hospitality developed by Jacques Derrida.
Therefore, the conducted research will take the form of a flexible archival format, as is usually the case within my artistic practice.
Imagining the world through the lens of loser and hoping for a better future
(2025)
author(s): Anna Pierga
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
My thesis is an attempt to create a bridge between my artistic practice and theoretical research behind its themes and topics. I highlight imagination as a tool to recreate one’s world in order to survive a hostile, success-oriented and normative daily reality. The text is divided into three main sections. Each focusing consecutively on childhood,
queerness and examples of imagination in fairy tales and artistic practices; all understood through the lens of failure. I look at childhood as a queer and highly creative universal experience of living on the edge of established social norms.
I draw on queer writtings such as Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstram and Cruising Utopia: Then and There of Queer Futirity by José Esteban Muñoz in search of utopia and longing for a better future.
In the final part of my thesis I refer to Ursula Le Guin’s essays on fantasy and science fiction, fairy tales and artistic practices. I explore various examples of failed heroes and the role of imagination in order to rewrite the present for a queerer future of more possibilities.
Can I use words to build a house?
(2025)
author(s): Yanbing Wu
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022
BA Fine Arts
I started from my father’s dream - his future house. From a dialogue with him, dives me into memories and shapes a poetic space through the idea of Bachelard’s 'The Poetics of Space'. The house becomes the imagery in which the memories stay that we can enter in and touch it, to interact with the house that belongs to us, or never belongs to us.
Through the ‘experience of imagination’, the house exists not only to provide a space for perception and memory to meet but also to bring ‘awareness’ to the ‘back of self’. When the imagination circulation begins to drift away, a space is needed to enclose it. By encounters with the theories, literature, films, artists and artworks mentioned in the text, it is like walking through a forking path where you learn that yourself can be a way of knowing others.
Alienation: Regarding the Art, the Artist and the Audience.
(2024)
author(s): Julien Hamilton
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Thesis of the Royal Art Academy, The Hague, 2024
BA Fine Arts
In the landscape of modern society, alienation is a common denominator to the experience of individuals. Whether this is due to society’s perpetual acceleration, or the experience of life through the ever-present lens of consumerism, alienation is an unmissable part of the contemporary human experience.
This extends to the art world, where the chasm separating an ever-booming global market for the arts, and institutions struggling to get their pre-covid-19 visitor numbers highlight the disparities in the experience of art today.
These disparities will ultimately transpire in the experience of the viewer. But how, and why can art be a catalyst for alienation in late-contemporary society?
This Graduation Research Paper is an attempt at exploring the relationship between the artwork, the audience, and the artist, so as to attempt and provide a comprehensive notion of the ways in which relationships form around artworks, notably through communication theory. This GRP will also explore examples of elements of influence in the formation of communicative structures between the art and the audience. Notably, this paper will discuss the myth of the artist, and its influence as an authority in the experience of art, as well as the influence of spatial context on the reception of art.
The paper will conclude that the artist possesses limited agency in the reception of their artworks, and that in order to provide an honest experience to a contemporary audience, the artist must seek to understand and deconstruct the codes which surround the audience's consumption of art.
From Within and Beyond: The History of Automatism and its Artistic Applications - Indra Joachimsthal - BFA GRP
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Indra Joachimsthal
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
KABK Thesis / Graduation Research Paper of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024/25.
Bachelor Fine Arts
This Graduation Research Paper explores automatism as an art-making method, both its historical trajectory and its practical application. The historical context will touch upon the use of automatism in the Spiritualism movement, Psychoanalysis and later Surrealism. The second part is a practical guide exploring and explaining a plethora of automatic art-making techniques.
How to Masculine
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Haevn Aalbersberg
This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2025.
BA Fine Arts.
The research paper is meant to reflect on the Western masculinity standards of today’s society in a not so traditional way, truckspotting.
To be an outsider of the norm is sometimes hard. How to navigate through the linear when all you want to do is worm around and just be yourself. I would like to offer a guide on "how to masculine" through a queer/trans point of view. Searching for and through extreme forms of masculinity and exploring them from deep within. Hopefully finding out along the way what I find to be so fascinating about the masculine, and why it has always been such a big part of my existence.
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Fine Arts In this thesis insight from the discourse on metafiction, a mode of writing which breaks and exposes the conventional frames of literary fiction, is used to analyse works of visual art that show a similar criticism towards the conventions of their medium.open exposition comments (0)
Thesis of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2022 BA Fine Arts I started from my father’s dream - his future house. From a dialogue with him, dives me into memories and shapes a poetic space through the idea of Bachelard’s 'The Poetics of Space'. The house becomes the imagery in which the memories stay that we can enter in and touch it, to interact with the house that belongs to us, or never belongs to us. Through the ‘experience of imagination’, the house exists not only to provide a space for perception and memory to meet but also to bring ‘awareness’ to the ‘back of self’. When the imagination circulation begins to drift away, a space is needed to enclose it. By encounters with the theories, literature, films, artists and artworks mentioned in the text, it is like walking through a forking path where you learn that yourself can be a way of knowing others.open exposition comments (0)