4 – 5.2.2026
Culture in the Cave #2 Dirty Together with Venus Jasper
Studio visit and getting dirty with artist Venus Jasper.
Venus Jasper (Griepink) is a queer visual artist, singer-performer, educator, writer and curator – currently based in Amsterdam. In their counter-cultural and ritualistic work they envision spirited and sensuous post-capitalisms that spell the decolonization of the anthropocene, rekindle more-than-human kinship, and forward (neuro-)queer and trans-historic perspectives on ecology, folklore, contemporary culture, spirituality and the self.
Venus likes to create multidisciplinary art projects; ultra-sensory spatial installations wherein grounded tactility meets playful mythological futurism. From sculptural mudscapes teeming with life to participatory durational performances, from ritual workshops to audiovisual pieces, from electronic soundscapes to vernacular totemistic sculptures — each creation invites audiences into a realm of exploration and introspection about both personal and planetary concerns. Within the context of each project, Venus often activates discourse via embodied alter-egos, shape-shifting as either a Pagan-Queer high-priestess in detailed artisinal costumes, host, caretaker, or otherwise. Highlights in their recent practice are the large solo exhibition EARTHSHRINE (2022) at MU Eindhoven, which was a speculative and contemporary sacred space for soils, and the bog-fury invoking music-performance OAKBaLLZ and EELSKin (2023) at Rupert Lithuania.
In recent years, Jasper’s work increasingly involves music production and the development of songs and invocations, alongside of a deepening sculptural practice that explores the artists relation to sacred swamps, (White/European/Celtic) ancestry, and trauma — such as the object-based installation Mire of Melusine (2025) at Garage Rotterdam. Presented as a personal shrine, this work was populated by ceramics, aluminium-cast baths, and fish-leather bodysuits. Currently, Venus is assembling written work reflecting on neurodiversity, “sacred nature”, chronic illness and contemplations on various traditional medicine practices, and are a resident at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC). Later this year, Venus is wrapping up and releasing their industrial-gothic electronic music debut Bzz Bzz — a sonic and lyrical exploration of dark emotions, heated in the crucible of climate decay, rising fascisms, and the lethal death-spasms of Empire.
Be it through art, music, writing, or educating, Jasper’s activities always root in the interplay between feeling and knowledge, exploring fields of queer ecology, environmentalism, land-based ways of knowing, rejected wisdom, activism, science fiction, the more-than-human, sex, gender, and identity.
https://www.venusjasper.earth
image: Stills from the single-channel video Murky Murky, Little Bitch Witch – Venus Jasper – 2023
video: Murky Murky, Little Bitch Witch – Venus Jasper – 2023