Boris van Berkum

Boris van Berkum (Rotterdam - Netherlands, 1968) Boris van Berkum is a visual artist and he is a typical neo-artist: he combines styles and forms from different periods, cultures and religions into new works of art. He does this after extensive research and in close cooperation with representatives from those cultures. He works in a wide variety of mediums, such as the traditional ceramics and bronze and the more experimental 3d- modelling techniques. In the early 1990’s van Berkum lived in Prague where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. To finance his studies he made political cartoons and illustrations for English language newspapers. Once back in the Netherlands, Van Berkum founded MAMA, 'showroom for media and moving art' in Rotterdam in 1997. He has been the artistic director of this dynamic podium for young art and culture until 2007.

During MAMA, together with his business partner Jeroen Everaert, he founded Mothership an employment and project agency for contemporary artists. He was its co-director until 2005. After leaving showroom MAMA, Van Berkum reinvented himself as a visual artist. Boris van Berkum is currently working on the 'ABAN’ art-collection, This is a collection of new winti artworks, with which he helps winti priestess Marian Markelo to revive the visual art-tradition within the winti culture and to materialize the essence of winti in the Netherlands. Van Berkum is also co-founder of the Cool Clay Collective, a ceramics workshop by and for visual artists. Boris van Berkum's art is collected by the Groninger Museum and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen amongst others.