Marjolijn Houdijk (1981) graduated in 2024 from the prestigious Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Her artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the expressive and conceptual potential of the human body. By working both intuitively and deliberately, she creates pieces that balance spontaneity with precision, blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Houdijk is fascinated by how the body interacts with its environment—how movement can shape space, alter perception, and embody time.

Her practice draws inspiration from disciplines such as dance, sculpture, and performance art, using the body as both medium and subject. In her work, movement becomes a form of narrative, carrying emotion while questioning how the body is represented and understood. Her art thus exists at the intersection of physical presence and conceptual reflection, inviting viewers to consider the body not only as form but also as a vessel of temporality, politics, and perception.

For Studio UK Editions, Marjolijn presents I Erased The Darkness For You, a work rooted in her residency at De Koepel prison in Haarlem. There, she investigated how the experience of confinement alters physical and emotional states, and how bodily responses to restricted movement can be recorded. The piece reflects on the weight of time behind closed doors—the heavy sound of a door locking, the shifting of light through barred windows, the transformation of a cell into a timeless non-place. Through erasure and re-drawing, Houdijk translated these sensory impressions into a visual language, questioning how confinement reshapes our relationship with space, time, and the act of being seen.