Maartje Blans featured in The Grand Vision: Diverse Narratives of Contemporary Women’s Art – international exhibition in Taiwan

Dutch artist Maartje Blans participates in The Grand Vision: Diverse Narratives of Contemporary Women’s Art at Da Xiang Art Space in Taichung, Taiwan. On view until May 3, 2025.

The work of Maartje Blans is currently on view in the international exhibition The Grand Vision: Diverse Narratives of Contemporary Women’s Art at Da Xiang Art Space (大象藝術空間館) in Taichung, Taiwan. This group exhibition brings together thirteen female artists from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Denmark, and explores how contemporary women artists engage with themes such as culture, nature, identity, emptiness, and social change.

Participating artists

王綺穗 WANG Chi-Sui、申吏羅 SHIN Rira、⽯垣美幸 ISHIGAKI Miyuki、江宇（馮慧中）JIANG Yu（FENG Hui-Chung）、吳欣宇 WU Hsin-Yu、⾼⼭琴 KOH San-Keum、崔娜利 CHOI Nari、張若綺 CHANG Ruo-Chi、梁美琪 Maartje BLANS、許維頴 HSU Wei-Ying、游孟書 YOU Meng-Shu、⿈曼滋 Ng Buan-Cher、蓓特•絲珂約特迦德 Bente SKJøTTGAARD。

The Grand Vision: female perspectives in contemporary art

The Grand Vision explicitly focuses on female perspectives within contemporary art and demonstrates how individual artistic voices together form a broad and layered narrative. The exhibition is structured around five thematic chapters, in which personal experiences, cultural backgrounds, and universal questions enter into dialogue — reflecting the interconnectedness of our time, where both a grand vision and a refined sensitivity become visible.

Installation Ink and Brush by Maartje Blans

Within this exhibition, Maartje Blans presents her work Ink and Brush, a spatial installation created using paper and cotton thread. The work explores the relationship between line, emptiness, space, and bodily gesture, inviting the viewer into a state of slowness and contemplation.

The work originates early in Blans’s artistic practice and reflects her long-standing fascination with Eastern culture and philosophy, as well as the ongoing dialogue between East and West. In her work, she continuously moves between Eastern and Western visual languages, combining elements of painting, calligraphy, textile art, and installation.

Emptiness plays a central role in this work — not as absence, but as an active space. The space surrounding the line and the material creates meaning, rhythm, and breath. The work transcends the traditional boundaries of the flat surface, translating brushstrokes and lines into a spatial experience, in which shadow, light, and perspective continually generate new meanings.

Da Xiang Art Space on Ink and Brush

Within The Grand Vision, the work of Maartje Blans closely resonates with the broader themes of the exhibition. Her practice explores how silence, emptiness, and simplicity can function as a counterbalance within a world that is becoming ever faster, fuller, and louder. This approach shows strong affinities with Eastern philosophies, in which emptiness is understood as a place of potential and transformation.

Curator CHUNG Ching-Hsin of Da Xiang Art Space describes Ink and Brush as a work that “captures the traces of the artist’s thinking and actions in a form of weaving, written through the body and the hands.” The work functions not only as an object, but as a spiritual and physical experience, inviting viewers to reconsider their perception.

“The work ‘Ink and Brush’ by Dutch artist Maartje Blans is a miniature installation. She tends to use plain, everyday materials such as paper and cotton thread, employing a highly succinct representational method of manual craft to express her special feeling for the materials in an intuitive and artistic way. From the special experience of being a Western woman who has lived in China, she roams between Eastern and Western culture. Her understanding of painting, ink and wash, emptiness, line, and space reveals the relationships and perceptions of reality underlying the presentation of visual physicality. The expressive method chosen by Maartje Blans is a form of ‘weaving’ that encodes the traces of her mind, written in bodily performance by means of her hands. Ink and Brush is not just a concept for Maartje Blans, but is also a spiritual object built with these materials. Although she is a Westerner, she has an inclination toward Eastern culture. Her work ‘Ink and Brush’ breaks through the boundaries of the flat surface. Through the form of installation, she integrates brushstrokes and materials into space, transforming everyday objects into spatial situations. In doing so, she invites viewers to reconsider their perception and challenges the traditional boundaries of contemporary art.”

The Grand Vision: contemporary women’s artistic practices

Through contributions by artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, The Grand Vision demonstrates how women artists today respond to social change, ecological issues, personal history, and cultural identity. Despite the diversity of media and styles, a shared sensitivity for detail, layering, and meaning emerges.

For Maartje Blans, this exhibition marks an important moment within her international practice and her ongoing engagement with the East. The work connects closely to her broader oeuvre, in which painting, installation, and poetry converge, and where the relationship between what is visible and what remains unseen takes center stage.

Exhibition Information

Exhibition:The Grand Vision: Diverse Narratives of Contemporary Women’s Art

Location: Da Xiang Art Space (大象藝術空間館), Taichung, Taiwan

Dates: February 8 – May 3, 2025

Curator: CHUNG Ching-Hsin

Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM