Daniël Siegersma

Biography

I am a visual artist. My practice is rooted in showing up, getting curious, and taking time before doing anything. I bring together connoisseurs, enthusiasts, amateurs and local experts, who become
co-creators, a frame of reference and at times characters in the work. Together we produce multidisciplinary outcomes across film, performance, installation, and workshop. My practice centers on local cohesion, shared curiosity and intrinsic motivation. A recurring thread in my work is how communities shape and understand their own environments, and whether the deeply local can be universal.

Contact at: danielsiegersma@hotmail.com

Co-creator Baobab Magazine

Based between Hamburg and Oldenzaal

Newsletter

Education

University of Applied Arts Vienna - MA Social Design
Royal Academy of Arts The Hague - BA Photography

Exhibitions, press, prizes

2026
Exhibition - Eer Onzer Zwijgt - link

Residency Kunstwerk in Kolderveen - From 17th of February to 18th of May - link

2025
Master graduation exhibition - My graduation work shown an the University of Applied Art in Vienna (link)

Exhibition - Exhibition - The Relationship - From 18th of may till 22nd of June, exhibition part of the festival Wiener Festwochen. (link)

2024
Stipendium - Recipient Afman/Peeters Fonds - link

Film Screening - Screening of 'It Must Be The Timing Belt' at Athens Digital Arts Festival - link

Film Screening - Screening of 'It Must Be The Timing Belt' at First Cut RESEARCHING, MAKING AND CONVERSING - link

Exhibition - 'Others' - On January 31th, 2024 at the opening of the exhibition “Nur Hier Nur Jetzt” in Floridsdorf (Vienna) the performance "Others” (by Daniël Siegersma and Grayson Ruple) took place. The performance consisted of four performers who shared a story based on experiences of other people whose lives were affected by the rules and codes of the norm.

2023
Exhibition - Together with Jana Romanova we coordinated the first years of the master Photography & Society KABK students to create the exhibition ‘Everything that melts is about to Blend’ - link

Exhibition - 'Knock Knock who's there?!' - The exhibition brings together the works of five artists - Filippo Maria Ciriani, Daniël Siegersma, Sophie Allerding, Yusuf Zucchero, and Rudi van Delden. The artists explore a range of themes and issues through their installations, sculptures, and audio-visual works. In collaboration with Dispari duo and De Waterkant - link

Performance - "During Prospects, a performer takes one of Siegersma's works from the wall and then, in front of the audience and Siegersma, launches into a discussion about all of his unfinished projects. Why do so many ideas remain undeveloped, and what guarantees that a work will be completed? Siegersma undergoes the sermon he organized himself in the midst of the exhibition." Preformed and co-created by Yusuf Zucchero - link

2022
Exhibition - 'South from here' - Pub talks, bringing back the photography. (Created by Dispari) link

Exhibition - ‘Looking For Problems’ Together with Rudi van Delden and Pietro Bulfoni. An exhibition on problem solving. Hosted by Lab22

Exhibition - Together with Jana Romanova we coordinated the first year master Photography & Society KABK students to create countercurrents a group exhibition in collaboration with Creative Court, The Hague. In February this year, twelve artists from seven countries were prompted by the existing issue of underwater munition burial sites in the North Sea. - link

Shortlisted - 'South from Here' At the Belfast Photo Festival

Lecture - ‘A Tribune To This’ An interactive lecture on how can the distribution/dissemination of the image help us question what authorship means - link

Exhibition - Baobab collaboration with ‘Borgo di Villafredda’ in medieval hamlet of Villafredda di Tarcento, Udine, Italy. - link

2021
Lecture - 'Undiciplining Photography' organised by MA photography and society, Nederlands Fotomuseum - link

Lecture - 'Cool Coding' Talk about the Grotto project - link

Stipendium for Emerging Artists from the Mondriaan fonds (link)

Publication - paper exhibition in Hard//hoofd magazine - link

Project - launch of the Grotto.nu website - link

Interview - Bird in flight magazine - 'Anorak' - link

2020
Online Exhibition - Tune of the Hamlets part of 'Hoogtij May 29: Should I stay or Should I go. (link)

2019
Exhibition - Should I stay or should I go, Tetem, Enschede, The Netherlands. (link)

Article - Worlds, People, Places - resistance through culture - (link)

Exhibition - Worlds, People, Places - resistance through culture, Noorderlicht photo festival, Groningen, The Netherlands (link)

Exhibition - Visions of Europe Museo della Fotografia Pino Settanni, Matera, Italy (link)

Photography Residency - Matera European photography in collaboration with Canon, Italy

2018
Baobab - Launch 3rd edition Baobab Magazine (link)

Winner of the Young Art Support Amsterdam - Netherlands (link)

Exhibition - Curator of an exhibition in collaboration with the University of Leiden and Baobab Magazine (link)

Interview - British Journal of Photography - Issue #7878: Nature

"Anorak" (link)

Exhibition - Takeaway exhibition of Anorak commissioned by Theater aan

het Spui in Den Haag. Publication that can be taken apart, folded out and turned into an copy of the exhibition of Anorak as seen in Theater aan het Spui during the 'Nee, jij hebt talent festival!' in October 2018, which be taken home and put on display on your own wall. This takeaway exhibition was made in collaboration with Rudi van Delden.

Winner of the Steenbergen Stipend 2018 - The Netherlands (link)

Exhibition - Nederlands Foto Museum of the project "Anorak" September 15, 2018 to January 14, 2019

Online publication - Assignment for the International theater Amsterdam "Thuislozen" photo series

Exhibition - Graduation festival Royal Academy of Art "Honorable Mention department award"

Print publication - Project "Anorak" published in newspaper "The Hague central"

Interview - Project "Professional Amateurs" published in magazine "Shutr"

Interview - Project "Professional Amateurs" published in online magazine "Kiekie" (link)

2017
Exhibition - Migration from Above, assignment for the Humanity House in The Hague (Video installation, Group installation “I see peace”)-(link)

Exhibition - Video installation - Part of photo festival "Cortona on the move" - In collaboration with Donald Weber.

Exhibition - The project "professional Amateurs". Is part of the exhibition Fabulous failures in The Hague (link)

2016
Online publication - "it's like fishing" published on Ignant.com (link)

Publication - Project "it's like fishing" published in the magazine "BKN magazine" (link)

Publication - Part of a collective project made in Sarajevo, my contribution: "Keep on counting, Shepherd" was printed in a self-funded newspaper that we gave away for free to various agencies, institutions and people.

Daniël Siegersma

Making a Mountain out of a Molehill
Audio/film/performance/workshop

During a residency at Kunstwerk Kolderveen (February to May 2026), I worked with the communities of Kolderveen and Nijeveen to collect local stories shaped into scripts by writer Fenneke Knol. Six participants became six moles, each carrying a different story.

Rolf Brand tells the story of his ancestor, the mole behind that famous hill, who later surfaces at a recitation club called Da Costa where members are trained to speak proper Dutch instead of dialect, a club that now performs exclusively in dialect.

Elena Meijer tells the story of Hans Lecka, a young German deserter who hid in the woods near Nijeveen in 1944 and survived by fishing and trading with local farmers.

Mariska Hoekstra plays the mole who witnesses the discovery of an abandoned baby in a shed on the Galgenkamp, a boy named Pieter Camp who becomes a bailiff and marries the daughter of an innkeeper.

Pleun van 't Hoog speaks about his organic farm and how he experiences nature since losing his sight.

Lucina Bolding plays a mole digging from Steenwijk toward Nijeveen, encountering PFAS-contaminated earthworms and chickens no longer allowed outside, in Drenthe dialect.

René Kok tells the story of the church between the meadows in Kolderveen, which stands where it does because a horse broke its leg mid-journey.

The six films were shot on wildlife cameras with infrared lighting, capturing the performers in near-total darkness. The moles encounter the cameras in the tunnels and tell their stories there. What seems small can shift history.

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The residency produced several other strands of work alongside the films. Together with graphic designer Rudi van Delden, I collaborated with the Historische Vereniging Nijeveen on a special edition of their quarterly publication Diekpraot, filled entirely with stories by the association's own volunteers. I also organised a creative writing and performance workshop for local teenagers between 12 and 15, who worked with archival texts from a Dutch government campaign that once encouraged people to speak Standard Dutch rather than dialect. The irony was not lost: those carefully correct words have since ceased to exist, while the recital club that produced them has become a theatre group performing exclusively in dialect. During the exhibition, the teenagers performed the poems they had created to a live audience.

On 16 May 2026, these threads came together at Kunstwerk Kolderveen: six short films, a publication, live performances by the teenage participants, and the presence of the Historische Vereniging Nijeveen. The afternoon opened with a symposium on social art practice before the official opening at 16:00.

During the residency I organised a creative writing and performance workshop for local teenagers between 12 and 15 years old. Guided by writer Fenneke Knol and myself, the participants worked with texts from the historical archive of Nijeveen, nearly 80 years old, as a starting point for writing and performing their own short pieces. The texts came from a government campaign of that era aimed at encouraging people to speak Standard Dutch rather than dialect. In the workshop we talked about what that meant, how those carefully correct Dutch words have since ceased to exist, and about the irony that the recital club which produced them has since transformed into a theatre group that performs exclusively in dialect. Like the mole digging through the ground and stumbling upon something long buried, the teenagers dug through old words to make something new. During the exhibition on 16 May, they performed the poems they had created to a live audience.

The best way to get to know Nijeveen is through the people who have been digging into it for years. Early in the residency I reached out to the Historische Vereniging Nijeveen, the local historical association, to listen, meet people, and find my footing in the area. Together with graphic designer Rudi van Delden, this contact grew into a collaboration on a special edition of Diekpraot, the association's quarterly publication written by its own members.

We were welcomed warmly. Stories flowed over coffee. Over many mornings we dug into the local history of Nijeveen alongside the volunteers, and their dedication to preserving that history was palpable. As outsiders, we were struck by the richness of what we found. The special edition of Diekpraot was filled entirely with stories by the volunteers: personal memories of Nijeveen, their own interests, and images from the archive. An edition that shows how much knowledge and care sits behind the people who quietly keep local history alive. Here and there, between their contributions, Rudi and I added something of our own.

On 6 March 2026, we presented the edition at an evening event at Kunstwerk Kolderveen, together with the association's members and volunteers.

The Relationship
Audio/film/performance/workshop

Our project that consists of Susanne Büchele, Grayson Ruple, Viktoria Aksenova and me titled The Relationship, uses non-human creatures to explore complex social, political, and cultural topics in an unconventional way. Each creature represents a specific theme and engages through conversation with people and its own maker. These creatures, strongly inspired by puppetry and cinematic props, were physically created. The creatures are the horseshoe crab, the leopard slug, the starling, and the seagull. By framing the conversation through the lens of the creature and the personal experience of the maker, we aim to create a space where complex ideas can be communicated in a digestible manner, providing new understanding while challenging human-centric perspectives.

In our universe, the creatures reside on a ship constantly on the move, figuring out where to go next based on the ones aboard. It first harboured at the "Republic of Love" at the Funkhaus in Vienna, Austria, where Wiener Festwochen set up multiple initiatives, exhibitions and performances in which our Relationship also exists as an exhibition. On four screens every creature shows its own video collage of recorded conversations, reflections and scenes. These collages function as triggers for deeper exchange on the topics addressed, through live interactions, workshops, and a physical exhibition space.

Our project is inspired by a pirate approach to democracy, power redistribution, and coexistence. In Marcus Rediker's Villains of All Nations we found a mirror for our experimental project: the 18th century pirate ship practicing radical equality, electing leaders, sharing the plunder and making collective decisions. Our Relationship fares with these values too, but is mainly a metaphor for exchange. To stay true to the pirate nature of the project we hijacked audiences attending the countless events organised by the festival, where our creatures roamed and struck meaningful conversations with festival goers.

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It Must Be The Timingbelt
Short film

This film explores a personal family drama. The actors in the film were not allowed to learn the script by heart and would have to read the script for the first time while playing their roles in front of the camera. Every take they got a bit better.

To read the letters received from the bureaucratic offices after a loved one dies. You reread those difficult letters, again and again. Under the cloak of grief and salty cheeks, you speak the words in these letters, almost as an exercise to understand better what all these words mean. Like the actors who did not learn the script by heart but are in the middle of the rehearsal. Speaking the script out loud, and every time you do, you inhabit the role a bit more.

In a desolate location somewhere in between places a car breaks down. Amid these troubles, the people in the car seem occupied with the unethical mishandling of an inheritance tax case. At a slow pace, and on sweat and disgruntled arguments the car rolls on.

What once was yours now needs to be divided.

A short film in the dialect spoken in the North-Western part of Germany called 'Ostfriesisch' or commonly referred to as Platt-Deutsch. The acting of this film was done in collaboration with a local theatre group from Emden (Laienspiel).

Directed by Daniël Siegersma
Written by Daniël Siegersma
Produced by Iris-sanne van der Aar
Executive produced by Daniël Siegersma
Director of Photography - Lester Kamstra
Music by Isidor ten Hooven
Lighting Assistant - Stef Bulten
On Set Translator - Tobias Keunecke
Production Assistant - Tobias Keunecke,
Josje van Stekelenburg

Edit & Sound Design - Jonas Van Impe
Color Grade - Lester Kamstra
Titel animation & Graphic Design by Celine Hurka
Script Translation German - Tobias Keunecke
Script Translation Plattdeutsch - Mayor of Emden, Tim Kruithoff
Additional Foley - Lester Kamstra
Stills Photography - Filippo Maria Ciriani

CAST

Helga Koch - Driver
Tanja Inhoven - Red headed person
Manfred Rosenboom - Passenger seat person
Sascha Goldenstein - Back pushing person
Dietmar Groenhagen - Backseat person
Erika Zimmermann - Radio

Tune Of The Hamlets
Interachtive installation

Tune of the Hamlets is a video installation in which I explore the Low Saxon language through a small self-organized regional choir. The search began: finding five people who could sing in their own regional dialect within the Dutch Low Saxon regions of Drenthe, Twente, Urk, Groningen, and Stellingwerf. These five singers each perform the same song in their respective dialect. On the recording day, the song, which contains five different dialects, was recorded in both sound and film. Using close-microphoning, we recorded each singer individually while they sang simultaneously, allowing for five separate channels afterward. Using a mixer, visitors to the video installation can choose which dialects are heard, enabling them to experience the similarities and differences between these regional languages. This project exemplifies the method I was exploring, and the subsequent project It Must Be the Timing Belt continues this approach.

The video installation is only a small part of the entire project. The long preparation phase of finding the singers and translators is also crucial. Collaboration occurs with people who initially do not know each other but are introduced through the project, including myself, a composer, translators, and a linguist.

This project is made in collaboration with iii's residency program that allows internationally established artists and local emerging artists to work side by side for a period of time in the iii workspace in The Hague. Guest artists are invited to connect with the local community, develop new work and present their work to the local public.

https://instrumentinventors.org/about/residencies/

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Grotto
Audio/film/photography

During the interwar period, replicas of a French cave began appearing all over Europe. Building your own Lourdes grotto became a trend after the Catholic Church endorsed veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary following Marian apparitions in Lourdes, in the south of France, and peaked after Pope Leo XIII had his own replica built in the Vatican gardens. In Belgium and the south of the Netherlands in particular, self-built grottos appeared in great numbers. Dutch and Belgian farmers' union stores even began selling prefab Lourdes grottos to meet the demand.

Each copy of the Massabielle Grotto has its own personalised architecture. Beyond the grottos built in monastery and church gardens, many were constructed in the front and backyards of devotees who could not afford a pilgrimage to France. These were acts of devotion, but also acts of making. Embedded in each one is a particular vision of the miraculous, shaped by the hands and the means of whoever built it.

In collaboration with artist Rudi van Delden and the Meertens Instituut, we set out to document the self-built grottos of Limburg before they disappear. We followed one devoted builder who had constructed multiple grottos across the region, tracing his work across backyards and side streets. What we found was a tradition that had quietly woven itself into the local landscape. The grottos had become part of the community, cherished by Christian and non-Christian neighbours alike. Many people still have one and know exactly who built it for them.

The collected photographs and interviews came together in a website where all the grottos merge into a single, ever-mutating grotto, one that never looks the same twice. A living archive that keeps reshaping itself, the way devotional traditions always have.

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Looking For Problems
Event

Problems are personal, and therefore can be rather small or really big, they can be practical or theoretical. One might be mostly struggling with the loneliness brought by lockdowns, or with the disappearance of a cat. Some participants might be only dealing with small technical problems with their car, and that's it.

With Looking for Problems we created a one-day event where strangers could gather and exchange thoughts on how to approach a problem. At the entrance participants were greeted by a bouncer who asked a simple but intimate question: "What is your problem?" Their answer was printed onto a receipt, which they then brought inside. Before entering, the bouncer explained: hang your problem on the red line on the wall.

Once inside, the rule became clear: you can only receive a drink if you first provide a solution to someone else's problem on the wall. Participants scanned the growing display of problems, chose one that resonated, and formulated a possible solution, practical, imaginative, humorous, or sincere. At the bar, they told their solution to the bartender, who printed it on a new receipt and handed over a drink. The printed solution was then placed underneath the problem it addressed, gradually forming clusters of proposals, ideas, and reflections.

Over the course of the event, the wall filled up with an expanding collection of shared troubles and anonymous responses. The space became an ecosystem of exchange: people reading, reacting, contributing, and encountering one another through their problems and solutions.

Through these simple gestures, naming a problem, offering a solution, sharing a drink, Looking for Problems created a temporary community where strangers stepped into each other's worlds.

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South From Here
Photography

South from Here (2022) - In collaboration with Filippo Maria CirianiIt has been a while.

The feeling of holding a camera and moving freely, we couldn't experience this. An accident that changed everything, unfolding a different reality. What we did in this very project is a combustion of restlessness, chasing a story-hook, and the feeling as if we are still competent enough to go out and make ‘something’. We did not take photographs for almost two years. We were occupied with anything but photography. As for everyone, we could taste the restlessness in the air these last two years. We had to do this trip. We contemplated many projects over the last two years and many, well, none, came to fruition. This demotivated us greatly.

Often the conceptualization of work was how far we were able to go. The actual realization of that work never happened. We were on a quest to bypass this restlessness using the thing we love, photography. We did the talking, the conceptualizing, the thinking, now the time had come to produce. We went out and planned 5 days in a new context, in this case Northern France and Southern Belgium, after hearing the story of a farmer who by accident moved the border between France and Belgium.

We felt touched by this story both in a literal and metaphoric way. Things happen when you anticipate them. Be wary, ‘things’ happen. We are not saying that the ‘thing’ you are anticipating is going to happen. I think this is a unique feature that photography offers. In our case, while focussing on finding that one thing that could communicate our story we were open for eventualities that materialized into the actual plot. One could say, this is quite a random formulation of a project. We would argue that the photography project had already begun when the anticipation started boiling. Meaning we were open to find the eventualities.

This time, with a ticklish feeling in our belly. Discovering the story of this farmer, who changed the borders of two nations with a simple gesture, gave us confidence and enough interest to drive hundreds of kilometers south from home. If a man can move a border with his own hands, why can't we simply move towards the thing we were missing the most? And here it is, the accident that changed everything and threw us on our old path. This story does not have an epi-center, it only has a gesture, an unpremeditated gesture that sets in motion a different reality from the one we were used to.

It was moved so we followed.

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Anorak
Photography

My family has no tradition. Yet, my region is full of them. Growing up in Twente, I watched the boys who lit the Easter fires every year, who took part in klootschieten and harvest festivals. I watched, but never quite belonged.

For Anorak I immersed myself in the rural traditions of Twente as an amateur anthropologist. The relics in my family home, objects from ancestors, had always been there without explanation. They pointed to a world I was curious about but had no direct access to. Are we by default participants of our regional traditions, or do we need to deserve it through action? And what does the rest of the country even know about these traditions, in a society where the gap between city and countryside keeps growing?

The project was awarded the Steenbergen Stipendium 2018. The jury described the work as a classic reportage subject transformed into a metaphorical reflection on large social shifts: the slow disappearance of local customs, and the widening distance between urban and rural Netherlands. The presentation included photography, film, and a publication.

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Professional Amateurs
Photography

My wife was bit skeptical about a hobby that required police approval, and she asked the officer "what kind of people do this for a hobby"?

He glances at the dining room table with my laptop, electronics and mess of papers, nods his head towards the table and says "that sort".

Flevoland, a province that was once a sea. As flat as the Netherlands gets, which is saying something. And now, on a friendly farmer's meadow, it's a popular launch site for rocket enthusiasts. This is where I met the people of the experimental rocket club Tripoli, and where I got pulled into the whole rocket madness. Men looking up at the sky, grunting with satisfaction at the crack of the parachute, jumping for joy when the rocket lands.

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Daniël Siegersma