Bio
Juliette Pestel (The Netherlands, 1963) is a Dutch visual artist, working in collage and assemblage since 2005. She works alternately from her wonderful 100-year-old studio in the city center of The Hague and her tiny home studio in Voorburg in The Netherlands.
Her art has been part of Dutch and international exhibitions, including at the Frauen Museum in Wiesbaden, Germany and the Industriemuseum in Ghent, Belgium just recently in 2023. Her collages can be found in private collections like The Kanyer Art Collection in the USA; and, as part of international projects, in museum and gallery collections in Europe, Australia and the USA, including the MOMA in New York City and The Verbeke Foundation in Belgium. Juliette’s work has also been published in zines, books and online in the Netherlands, the UK, the USA and Finland. Examples include The Cutting Chaos by Niko Vartiainen and Collage Care by Laurie Kanyer, MA.
Juliette is an art instructor and teaches workshops and courses, mainly in the Netherlands. She hosted a workshop in Belgium at Verbeke Foundation, famous for it’s collage museum and online workshops for national and international groups. Her teachings have taken her from her studio to many locations during events as well as schools and organizations. She also uses collage as a tool to work with special needs groups. Juliette is a member of the international collective The Collage Club and the Dutch collective COL-LAB, which she co-founded in 2022. She’s one of the researchers and test facilitators for an international project led by Laurie Kanyer, for a new book, The Manual for Facilitators for Collage Care, The Method. She is also co-creator of that book.
Her work is observational, cultural and often social commentary. It’s Elegant Activism with a feminist touch. Many pieces feature the image of perfect beauty from the fifties and suxties and have a message about the role of women and life in today’s context.The titles of Juliette’s works, often humorous and sarcastic, are an integral part of the work.
Since 2021, she’s been working on a body of work commenting on the paradox between how we love nature while at the same time we exploit and destroy it. Juliette is working towards a solo show and a book in 2026, accompanied by collage activist workshops.
Artist Statement
“The narrative is instrumental in my work, it sparks my creative process. I’m fascinated by women, their connections and interactions with people and their surroundings. I’m drawn to the concept of inheritance: what is passed on, not only material, but also in behavior and identity. Collage gives me great freedom to create the stories I want to share and to comment on what’s happening in our changing world and our relationships.
When addressing the important issues of our time, activism doesn’t necessarily have to be bold. It can also be elegant. The women in the source material I use are from the late fifties, and early sixties. It was a time when women were expected to be elegant, caring and good at housekeeping while remaining silent about important subjects – keeping their opinions to themselves. Their activist self can finally come out by giving them a voice in today’s themes and issues. They’re still elegant but, oh, do they have something important to tell you!”
