Laurence Aëgerter (1972) lives and works between Amsterdam, where she lives since 1993, and Marseille. In her work, she reinterprets archives and explores shifts of perception. This ranges from site-specific installations to tapestries and photography. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris, MAMAC Nice, the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, the Museum van de Geest in Haarlem and the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.

She is the winner of the Nestlé International Photography Prize at the Festival Images Vevey 2016 and the Prix du livre d’auteur at the Rencontres d’Arles 2018 as well as the French Ministry of Culture’s Photographic Commission 2022.

Laurence Aëgerter grew up in a family of antiquarians. As a child, she dreamt of being a detective or secret agent. Her passion for investigating unfamiliar territories finally came to a concrete form, halfway between art and anthropology. In the 90’s, she obtained two Master’s degrees in Art History, the first at the University of Aix en Provence and the second at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, focusing on trompe-l’oeil in 17th century Dutch painting.

Since 2001, she has dedicated herself to artistic projects and joined the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, from which she graduated in visual arts in 2005. Her work has since gained international recognition, has been included in private collections and is exhibited in prestigious institutions.

The human condition, perception and memory are the three pillars of her artistic research. By the prism of human sciences – from the great and small histories, from art history, from psychology to neurology – and their plural iconography – vernacular images, archival images from museum collections or taken from illustrated books and the Internet – Laurence Aëgerter operates as an investigator of our realities. Sometimes serious, sometimes playful, her works associate themselves with appropriation, translation and poetic displacement. They question the signifying power of the images that precede us, succeed us, surround us and exceed us, unconsciously.

Laurence Aëgerter’s works, whether in the form of an intimate or monumental photographic piece, an in situ installation, a collaborative project or an artist’s book, are attempts to answer questions that are shared, but which are commonly forgotten. In this hypersensitivity to the image, on the edge of synesthesia, Laurence Aëgerter invites us to reconnect with our senses, and to reconcile meaning and the essence of the world.

Full biography (download)

Photo: Koos Breukel

Studies
2005   Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1997    Master in Art History, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Prizes, Commissions and Residencies (selection)
2026   Commission of the Musée départemental Albert Kahn, Paris
2025   EKWC European Ceramic Work Centre, Oisterwijk, The Netherlands
2024   Commission of the MAMAC, Nice
2023   Commission and Carte Blanche Photographique of Centre des Monuments Nationaux de France
2022   National Commission of Photography, ‘Performance’, Ministère de la culture and 2015 Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP)
2020   Residency Manufacture de Sèvres, France
2018   Winner Author Book Prize, Les Rencontres d’Arles, France
2016   Winner Nestlé International Photo Prize, Festival Image Vevey, Switzerland
2014   Winner NRC Charity Awards, The Netherlands
2009   Residency Red A.I.R, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam

Solo exhibitions (selection)
2026   ‘Ode aan dagen van wijsheid’ (Ode to Days of Wisdom) curator Eliane Odding. Grote St. Laurenskerk, Alkmaar (NL)
2026    ‘Les diachroniques’, galerie Binome, Paris (FR)
2025   ‘Lullabies for the Storm’, abbaye du Thoronet, commissioned by Centre des monuments nationaux (FR)
2025   ‘Le miroir aveugle’, Bildhalle, Amsterdam (NL)
2024   ‘Elasticity of Presence’, Bildhalle, Zürich (CH)
2023   ‘Epos van de Geest’ (Epic of the Mind), Museum van de Geest, Haarlem (NL)
2022   ‘Eloge du double’, Galerie Binome, Paris (FR)
2022   ‘Laurence Aëgerter at Eurojust’ (European Union Agency for Criminal Justice), The Hague (NL), chairmanship of France for the European Union.
2020   ‘Ici mieux qu’en face’, curators Fannie Escoulen, Christophe Leribault and Clara Roca, Petit Palais Museum, Paris (FR)
2020   ‘Nachtjagd (Wilde Sau/Zahme Sau)’, curators Rieke Righolt and Maarten Verweij, Machinery of me, Arnhem (NL)
2019   ‘Cathédrales Hermétiques’, curator Fannie Escoulen, Les Rencontres d’Arles (FR)
2017   ‘Arithmétique de la perspection photographique’, Forum Für Fotografie, Cologne (DE)
2016   ‘Photographic Treatment ©’, Festival Images Vevey, Switzerland
2015   ‘Herbarium Cataplasma’, curator Kie Ellens, Fries Museum, Leeuwarden (NL)
2013   ‘The Modernists and More’, Hermitage Museum Amsterdam (NL)
2010   ‘Le Louvre’, curator Rebecca François, MAMAC, Nice (FR)
2010   ‘Seek & Hide’, Museum van Loon, Amsterdam (NL)

Collective exhibitions (selection)
2026   ‘Choisir la paix. Le combat d’Albert Kahn’. Curator Clément Poché, MDAK , Paris (FR) with a.o. Charles Fréger and Sophie Ristelhueber.
2025   ‘René, I am still standing’, curator Marieke Wiegel, Church of Our Lady, Breda (NL) with a.o. Oscar Munoz en Alicia Framis.
2024   ‘L’ombre, le reflet, l’écho’, MAMAC au Palais Lascaris, Nice (FR)
2023   ‘The Changing Landscape: from Voerman to Van der Linden’, Museum de Fundatie / Kasteel het Nijenhuis, Heino / Wijhe (NL)
2022   ‘Devenir fleur’, MAMAC, Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Nice (FR) Group exhibition with a.o. Yto Barrada and Otobong Nkanga
2022   ‘Alternative realities’ at Unbound/Unseen, curator Damarice Amao, with a.o. Anna Malagrida and Neoza Goffin, Amsterdam (NL)
2021   ‘New distances’, Musée du Jeu de Paume, Jeu de Paume Lab, Paris (NL)
2019   ‘Photos around books’, Camera Austria, curator Reinhard Braun, Graz, Austria
2018   ‘Big Botany: Conversations with the Plant World’, Spencer Museum of Art, curator Stephen H. Goddard, Kansas, USA
2018   ‘Rendez-vous with Frans Hals’, curator Ann Demeester, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem (NL)
2016   ‘I Wanted to Be a Photographer’, curators Fannie Escoulen and Anna Planas, Fondation Colectània, Barcelona, Spain
2016   ‘Quickscan NL#02’, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2015   ‘Making Africa – A continent of contemporary design’, Guggenheim Bilbao, curators Amelie Klein and Okwui Enwezor, Bilbao, Spain
2015   ‘Avoir Lieu’, Mois européen de la photographie, Luxembourg
2014   ‘Tristes Tropiques : illustrations hors texte’, curator Azu Nwagbogu, Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos, Nigeria
2011   ‘From Here On’, Les Rencontres d’Arles, France/ Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain/ FOMU Fotomuseum, Antwerp, Belgium

Bibliography (selection)
2025   ‘L’image Tissée’ / ‘The woven image’, Etienne Hatt, Art Press
2024   ‘Laurence Aëgerter aux marches du palais’, Gilles Renault, Libération
2024   ‘Aëgerters thora’, Arnon Grunberg commissioned by Museum of the Mind
2023   ‘Epreuves de la matière’, Héloise Conésa, exhibition cataloque Bibliothèque nationale de France
2020   Monograph book Laurence Aëgerter, Ici mieux qu’en face, Fannie Escoulen and others, Actes Sud, Arles, France
2020   Conversations, vol 3, Rémi Coignet, The Eyes Publishing, Paris, France
2019   L’art de l’évasion de Laurence Aëgerter, Fannie Escoulen, ArtPress.
2029   Rencontres d’Arles 2019, ‘Cathédrales hermétiques’, Actes Sud, Arles, France
2018   Gradhiva, Sur le vif, photographie et anthropologie, Camille Joseph and Anaïs Maurin, Quai Branly museum, Paris, France
2017   Photographie et mémoire, catalogue Mois européen de la photographie, ‘Avoir Lieu’, Leonora Bisagno, Luxembourg
2017   Entretiens : Perspectives contemporaines sur les publications d’artistes, Jérome Dupeyrat, éditions Incertain sens, Rennes, France
2015   Netherlands Yearbook for the History of Art, Arts of Display, Frits Scholten, Leiden, The Netherlands
2011   Rencontres d’Arles 2011, ‘From Here On’, Actes Sud, Arles, France

Collections (selection)
FR    MAMAC, Nice; Bibliothèque nationale de France – BnF, Paris; Centre national des arts plastiques – Cnap; Château Borély, Musée des arts Décoratifs et de la Mode,                  Marseille; Musée Georges de La Tour, Vic-sur-Seille; Musée national de céramique de Sèvres.
NL    Nederlands Fotomuseum Rotterdam; Dutch Ministry of Foreign affairs; Amsterdam Museum; AMC Hospital, Academisch Medisch Centrum, Amsterdam; Museum                van Loon, Amsterdam; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Museum Het Dolhuys, Museum of Psychiatry and the Mind, Haarlem; Fries Museum, Leeuwarden;            ………Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Koninklijke Bibliotheek Den Haag.
USA  MoMa, New York; The New York Public Library, New York; Paul Getty research Center Institute, Los Angeles; Spencer Museum of Art, Kansas; John M. Flaxman         ………Library, The School of Art Institute of Chicago; Robert B. Hass family library, Yale University.
ES    Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
UK   Tate Gallery, London; Chelsea College of Art and Design, London; The Archive of Modern Conflict, London.
CH   Musée de l’Élysée, Lausanne; Nestlé Art collection, Vevey.
AT    MAK, Osterreichisches Museum für Angewandte und Gegenwartse Kunst, Vienna.