Ina Arends

Growing up at sea as a captain's daughter, imagination and fantasy were nourished by many travels. Staring at waves and clouds for days, not knowing where the next adventure would take place in another city, another country.

Ina Arends studied painting at the art academy and began her career as an artist in Amsterdam. After receiving several scholarships from the Fund for Visual Arts, it was time to pack her bags in search of new adventures. A journey on a ship as a cook, then on to New York museums. After a period in Lisbon, she commuted for a few years between Paris and her studio in Amsterdam before she finally settled in Brussels for many years. Interdisciplinary work had always interested her. She produced high-level projects in the fields of design, dance/performance, and food design, traveling to Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Paris, Taipei, Kyiv, and Madrid for that.

In search of further depth, Ina worked for a year with a group of people with physical, intellectual, cognitive, and auditory disabilities. Creating art, music, and fun together. Especially the intense contact was deeply touching. The unique way of communicating opened many doors, inspiring Ina to her current development.

Now working in her studio in Rotterdam, Ina conducts extensive research on this group of people and their role in art history and our current visual culture. Technological and medical developments are causing people with Down syndrome to slowly disappear from society, for example.

Why is this group barely depicted now and in the past? Is art capable of changing our entrenched collective idea about disabilities? In the work of Ina Arends, it certainly is.

Why is there a group of people in our society that is not visible in art history?