Nieke Koek The Netherlands
Nieke Koek is an interdisciplinary artist who works with the body as a key source of knowledge. For over fifteen years, she has been creating and reflecting on art projects within healthcare, care, and research settings, where art is used not as decoration, but as a way to better understand lived bodily experience and improve communication and insight in care.
Through close collaboration with patients, healthcare professionals, and researchers, Koek creates spaces for connection, reflection, and change. Her long-term projects explore themes such as illness, pain, recovery, vulnerability, and care, and take place in hospitals, universities, and research institutions. Alongside her artistic practice, she is trained as a body-oriented trauma therapist, which shapes her careful and ethical approach.
Nieke Koek © Peter Tijhuis
Nieke Koek © Peter Tijhuis
Nieke Koek © Peter Tijhuis
Discover the co-speakers
Jolien Posthumus
Jolien Posthumus has a background in applied arts, art history, and trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and supports organisations in developing cultures of care through arts-based interventions.
Tessa Kerre
Tessa Kerre is Head of the department Hematology and Full Professor at Ghent University Hospital, and a leading researcher in immunotherapy, stem-cell transplantation, and patient-centred care.
Junior Akwety
Junior Akwety is a Belgian-Congolese multidisciplinary artist who works across music, theatre, and pedagogy, using collective creation as a space for care, memory, and community building.
Brenda Anyango
Brenda Anyango is an independent clinical psychologist, behavioural therapist, speaker, and space creator working under the name SemaNami—meaning “talk to me” in her mother tongue, Swahili.
@ The conference
On Friday morning during “Culture & Care: Creating Common Ground for Change”, Nieke will talk together with Jolien Posthumus, Tessa Kerre, Junior Akwety and Brenda Anyango.
On Thursday afternoon she will present a round table discussion for Artists working in the Field of (Health) Care.
