Christien Meindertsma thoroughly explores the life of products and raw materials in her work. In some instances, the result of her projects may be the record of a process itself. In others, her investigations lead to commercial products. Careful investigation and documentation, themes of local production and under-explored resources characterize her work. Meindertsma seeks to reveal processes that have become distant in industrialization and encourage a deeper understanding of the materials and products that surround us.
Meindertsma’s first work was a book called Checked Baggage (2004): Meindertsma purchased a container filled with a week’s worth of objects confiscated at security checkpoints in Schiphol Airport. She meticulously categorised and photographed all 3267 items. Later, her book PIG 05049 (2007), documented all the products made from a single pig. Meindertsma explored the connection between raw materials and the everyday products that surround us, revealing a network between source and consumer that has become increasingly invisible. Another documentary project, Bottom Ash Observatory (2015), involved Meindertsma sifting through a bucket of Incinerator Bottom Ash – a plentiful and until recently unvalued by-product of the large scale incineration of household waste – to reveal and present the precious materials within.
Works such as the Flax Project (2012), and its numerous offshoots, are also typical of Meindertsma’s approach: Meindertsma purchased an entire harvest of a dutch flax farmer with the ambition of exploring how flax products might stay more locally produced. Commissioners have invited Meindertsma to turn her particularly investigative method of design and documentation onto a specific subject matter, subsequently Meindertsma has produced works that explore such wide-ranging subjects as Forestry in the Flevopolder region in the Netherlands, the relationship between Japanese porcelain and Dutch linen and the landscape of northern Canada.
Meindertsma’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rein. She won three Dutch Design Awards (2008) as well as an Index award (2009) for PIG 05049. The Flax Chair won the Dutch Design Award and Future Award (2016). Meindertsma graduated from the Eindhoven Design Academy in 2003.
