Camille Van Meenen
°1998, Belgium
Camille Van Meenen (she/her) was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1998. Not too long after, she embarked on a journey with her parents, leading her to move from country to country every odd year. Ghent would be Camille’s 9th location. Having lived mainly in Africa, but also in Europe, her nomadic experiences made her intrinsically passionate about the global world and sensitive towards the cultures that form it. She sees great value in the exchanges within international environments and recognises benefits from intersectionality. A multitude of perspectives— and the importance of considering them—is what inspires her the most. This drove her to pursue a BA in Cultural Studies at Maastricht University for the academic years 2018-2021. It is here—although always having had a feeling for the artistic—that her affiliation with the arts grew. As a result, she continued her academic career with a MA in Contemporary Art from a Global Perspective at Leiden University for the academic year 2021-2022. Her MA thesis, Gendered Subjectivities: The Bathroom in Art, From Modern to Contemporary, looked at how artists with diverging gender subjectivities represented bathrooms as being experienced differently, revealing this space as inherently gendered. Notably, her interest lies in how art and culture intersect. She believes that investigating the many relationships between visual arts and culture enriches our understanding of the world that we live in today. Camille places contemporary art as a central tool in challenging and making public existing societal structures and norms. After her studies, she devoted a year to gaining work experience within the art field. She started off by doing a 5-month internship at 1646 Experimental Art Space in The Hague, where she was then promoted to curatorial assistant for another 5 months. Alongside this, she also did a 4-month internship at A Tale of a Tub in Rotterdam. Most notable projects that she has worked on include 1646’s biannual publication and educational workshops for A Tale of a Tub; she joined curator-artist Yin Yin Wong for studio visits, was part of the selection committee for 1646’s residency open call, and assisted curator Johan Gustavsson during Prospects 2023 at Art Rotterdam and for his exhibition at Structura Gallery, Bulgaria