Curriculum Vitae

Eos Brüggen

Visual artist and theatremaker

Personal information

Pronouns: she/her or they/them

Date of birth: 4th of December 1996

Languages: Dutch (mother tongue), English (fluent), Italian (conversational)

Email: eoshelena@hotmail.com

Education

2019 - 2022: BFA Hons at Goldsmiths University in London (cum laude)

2018 - 2021: BA Ayurveda at the Delight Academy in Amsterdam(completed 2 years, cum laude)

2016 - 2017: Prepratory year at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam

2009 - 2017: Barlaeus Gymnasium in Amsterdam (profiel Cultuur & Maatschappij)

Selected work experience - Upcoming

Direction: Battiloro, the last goldbeater of Venice / To premiere in 2025 (currently editing and writing grant applications)

Battiloro, or goldbeater, is the story of the last artisanal goldbeater in Venice. In a city that once shone with 300 goldbeaters, there is now only one family left making gold leaf by hand: Mario Berta Battiloro. Soon, this workshop too will close permanently. This documentary not only encapsulates an age-old proces, it also shows the poetry of the mundane - the labour, the repetition, the rhythm - and the metamorphosis of a hard and inanimate chunk of metal into something as soft as velvet, so thin that it undulates like water. Battiloro, the last goldbeater of Venice is a tribute to a slow craft in a fast-paced world; enduring on the threshold of disappearance.

Scenography: Het Dromenpaleis / (2025)

Het Dromenpaleis is a two-part project based on actual dreams, initiated by Zephyr Brüggen, Han Ruiz Buhrs, and Niels Kuiters. Inspired by the book ‘Das Dritte Reich des Traums’ by journalist Charlotte Beradt, they will first search for the common denominator of Amsterdam residents' dreams, through a series of conversations with participants. In the second part, I will be involved: together we will build our own dream world, inspired by the dreams we discussed in the first part. It will be a performance in the form of a miniature theatre (based on the miniature theatre built by Baron van Slingelandt in 1781; without actors, starring moving set pieces. The miniature theatre is a wonderful imagination machine and lends itself well to the illogical, absurd structure of dreams. I will be responsible for designing the interior of the miniature theatre. In Het Dromenpaleis we ask whether there is such a thing as a collective subconscious? Are our dreams perhaps less private, and more collective or social than we think? What can our dreams tell us about the world we live in?

Exhibition: Sporen / Spoken (Trace / Ghost) / Location to be secured (2025)

I imagine, but can’t promise, that this is the final project within the red thread of the forest and all its inhabitants, within my practice (other projects mentioned below). For me, forests challenge human social constructs, as they exemplify a total transgression of these dualistic structures. This will be a piece about phenomenology and grief, about a tree falling silently in the forest, leaving it’s stump behind tethered to the ground by its roots. The aim of this project is to research the world in-between life and death, as on the decomposing tree stump mosses and mushrooms start to flourish.

Haydn: Die Schöpfung, with the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century / Location to be secured (2026)

Zephyr and I (Brüggen & Brüggen) will create a visual interruption and reaction to this semi-staged production of The Schöpfung.

Exhibition of my own work, curation of other exhibits, and authorship and design of the catalogue: Meshwork / Location to be secured (2025 - 2026)

Exhibition of upcoming work about the life of bees as non-human workers, and the interdependence and interconnectedness of bee, beekeeper, and landscape, while questioning the way of storytelling through a single main protagonist.

(Always) working on a big new project: Akasha

Fascinated by the Ayurvedic fifth element, Akasha, or, Ether, empty space, I started to wonder what the experience of the world would be like if we collectively accepted the idea of empty space being an element. Akasha will be a feminist project about grief, the presence of absence, and about the importance of all these empty spaces around us and in our bodies, as they hold everything else (the universe, the sky, a basket, a home, a stomach, a uterus, a word, a heart).

Selected work experience (2024 - 2020)

Collaboration: Secret Garden / Online release (2024)

For the occasion of the new release of artist and high-end jewelry maker Rosa de Weerd, I made a glove for her to exhibit a new line of jewelry on. The glove is inspired by Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, and transforms the hand of the wearer into a tree-like structure, adorned with moss, mushrooms, and sap-life-lines.

Production, costume design, scene-photography and poster design: Ekstasis / Festival Karavaan in Alkmaar & Bosfest in the Amsterdamse Bostheater (2024)

Ekstasis is a theatrical performance midway between an illegal party and an ancient ritual. In an empty station hall where trains race past, or among the trees in the middle of the forest, a random group of people gather. The five performers dance in an attempt to reach a feeling of ecstacy, in a world that is alienated from itself.

Funded by: Fonds Podiumkunsten, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten, Stichting Janivo, Stichting de Wilde Weg, Alkmaar maakt het, Zabawas and Stichting Melanie.

Read a review by Marijn Lems in the NRC here: https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/05/20/boeren-bouwvakkers-en-rave-beats-op-theaterfestival-karavaan-a4199370

Co-directed, costumedesign and scenography: Tussenwereld / Diemerpark (2023)

Location theatre piece/mime performance in the Diemerpark in Amsterdam, about the hidden world of mycelium. Accompanied by a sound piece, the audience walks towards a large heap of soil. Slowly a character dressed in a mushroom costume rises from the earth and tries to make their experience clear to those above ground. Tussenwereld functioned as the second part of a diptytch, Here: at the beginning, and at the end, which was exhibited at Factor IJ at the same time. Tussenwereld was the first time that my sister, Zephyr Brüggen, a theatre maker and a director, and I joined hands to play professionally. Zephyr wrote the monologue for the mushroom and took the lead in directing. The two of us have been collaborating ever since with more projects and play-things to come.

Funded by: Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten.

Solo exhibition: Here: at the beginning, and at the end / Factor IJ, Amsterdam (2023)

At Factor IJ, I extended the installation of my degree show, along with making additional artworks. These additional artworks included a larger-than-life fabric catalogue that people could leaf through and sit on, as well as small hand-bound catalogues for people to acquire, ceramic mushroom bowls for mushroom soup, and mushroom-lino’s printed on wadding.

The exhibition was on for a full month. Factor IJ also acquired one of my trees for in their art-rental-collection. The click between me and the people and the concept of the gallery was great, and this eventually resulted in my working there to date, managing the collection.

Funded by: Stadsdeel Oost and Het Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten.

Residency: SIS Artist Residency in Ordu, Turkey (2023)

During this one-month long residency in Perşembe, a village in Turkey, I was able to think deeply about where I wanted to go within my artistic practice. This came at a perfect time as I was, and sometimes still am, struggling with the spaces in which art is presented, along with all their unspoken behaviour rules. I was also able to see how one of the founders of the residency, Alper Aydin, was setting up the first major (outdoor/on location) retrospective exhibition the area has ever seen. The exhibition and the setting up of the exhibition was the perfect example of a possible solution to the things I was (and am) pondering about. I left feeling more self-assured and excited for things to come.

Group show / The Conduit, London (2022)

I exhibited the rug that was part of Here: at the beginning, and at the end, at the New York Times Climate Forward event at The Conduit at Leicester Square in London (1st - 3th July 2022).

Essay: Knuf / Goldsmiths’ St. James Hatcham (2022)

Knuffel in Dutch means ‘soft toy’, but it is also the translation for the word ‘hug’. Knuf is an essay about the symbiotic relationshop between my favourite knuffel, who is called Knuf, and me. I touch upon child pedagogy, intimacy, theories on play, object oriented onthology theories and identity in a coming-of-age, chronological order. The essay accompanied the installation that was completed the year before.

Degree show: Here: at the beginning, and at the end / Laurie Grove Baths (2022)

In a multi-sensory experience, the audience inhabits a textile and tactile forest. Humans, trees, moss, and mushrooms are interconnected via an audio- and light installation that lies beneath their feet like a mycelial network. The forest is full of sounds and the light dances on the moss through the break-up of the leaves. Similar to the world of fungi, this space offers itself as an in-between. By bringing opposing magical elements together (happiness and grief, playfulness and solemnity, rooting and rising), the potion starts to fizz.

For a more detailed description please see: https://www.eosbruggen.com/here-at-the-beginning-and-at-the-end

Costume design: Vecht / Likeminds (2022)

A monologue about the Dutch political and social tax scandal, the toeslagenschandaal, with three costume changes for one actress, a victim of the system. The costumes were made bigger and bigger with each change, resulting in the actress looking smaller and more fragile as the play progressed.

Group show: Knuf / Laurie Grove Baths (2021)

This installation is the first part of the Knuf project, the second being the abovementioned essay. The installation consists of a film that plays on an old CRT-tv, in which I wear a costume resemble Knuf. In this film Knuf reads a self-written story to my old other soft toys. The installation around this television resembles that of the film: pillows and blankets, children’s toys, and some of the soft toys as seen in the film are positioned around the TV. With this work I question the connection we have to the objects and stories that helped raise us, that we often thoughtlessly discard later in life. The aim is to deepen the intimacy with these objects again and therefor with a part of ourselves that we left behind.

Costume design: Lizzy & De Bacchanten / Amsterdamse Academie voor Theater en Dans (2021)

A back-to-back performance of Lysistrata by Aristophanes and the Bacchae by Euripides. I made the costume for the protagonist Lysistrata.

Concept, artwork and direction: In my orange world / Guildhall School of Music and Drama (2020)

I was fascinated by how much the music I listened to changed my experiences, and I was interested to see what would happen if I would give my audience this agency over the experience of my work. I combined this with my material research at the time: making fabric out of fruit. In collaboration with Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London, I created a piece titled In my orange world, where a woman wearing a dress made of sliced and dried oranges walks through the park. The audience is then given agency over the atmosphere of the work by turning a radio dial that changed the soundtrack of the video. I worked with 14 Guildhall students to compose 14 different soundtracks.

Additional work experience and information

Collection management and internship supervisor at kunstuitleen Factor IJ (2024 - now)
Course in drawing and painting / Artis Ateliers (2024, 2025)
Orientation course in Mime / Academie voor Theater en Dans, Amsterdam (2023)
Masterclass in historical corset making / Meesteropleiding Coupeur in Amsterdam (2023)
Student representative of BA Fine Art Year 2 / Goldsmiths University, London (2020 - 2021)
Next years student interviewer / Goldsmiths University, London (2020 - 2021)