KRISTA SMULDERS

Krista Smulders
Born in 1988, Venray (NL)
Lives and works in Eindhoven (NL)

Contact
krista_smulders@hotmail.com
instagram.com/kristasmulders
facebook.com/krista.smulders

Bio

Krista Smulders (1988, Venray) is a visual artist living and working in Eindhoven. With a background in Fashion and Fine Arts, she creates colorful worlds where humor, absurdity, and wonder are at the heart of her practice. Her work includes paintings, sculptures, films, performances and installations, in which she combines various techniques and materials into dynamic compositions. She challenges everyday conventions and explores themes such as ego, greed, and temptation.

Krista’s art invites us to embrace the unknown, to play with the unexpected, and to be amazed by everything we often overlook. As a mother and teacher of creative workshops for children, she is reminded daily of the pure curiosity and imagination of young minds. In her work, she strives to preserve and share this untainted wonder.

Through her art, Krista aims to create a space where everything is allowed – from the big, bold ideas to the small, magical moments that are often the most surprising.

Education
2012–2016 — Fine Arts & Design, MAFAD, Maastricht
2008–2011 — Fashion School, Eindhoven

Residencies
2024 — DE ARCADE, Ulingsheide Abbey, Tegelen
2017 — Greylight Projects, Hoensbroek
2017 — Atelier Mondial, Basel (CH)
2016 — Foundation B.a.d., Rotterdam

Selected Exhibitions & Projects

2024
• Group show: DE ARCADE, Ulingsheide Abbey, Tegelen
• Group show: Amuse, Galerie Wilms, Venlo

2023
• Art education in primary schools via Qrabbl
• Open studio route, Kunstkring Sint Anthonis, Oploo
• Sculpture workshop, Kunstwerkplaats Venray

2022
• Workshops: Monsters in Museumstad, Van Bommel van Dam, Venlo
• Group show: Roéte Route, Van Bommel van Dam, Venlo
• Public commission: Sculpture promoting reading, Cultuurpad & LokaalC
• Performance: De Legendarische Lekkerbek, Bosch Parade, Den Bosch
• Film screening: Intiem en Anoniem, Limburg Film Festival

2021
• Video workshops: Marres, Maastricht
• Exhibition: Voor Jong en Oud (w/ Michiel Ubels), Odapark, Venray
• Performances: Dramatic Childhood Play, Breda Buiten
• Performance: Classic Young Masters, Ingenhousz, Breda
• Screening: Beholders – documentary dialogues, Veghel

2020
• Group show: TAC 2 GO, TAC, Eindhoven
• Group show: Limburg Biennale, Marres, Maastricht

2019
• Performance: Church Service Remix, Grote Sint-Laurenskerk, Rotterdam
• Performance: Alienation Presentation, BUT Film Festival, Breda
• Performance Night, B32 Artspace, Maastricht
• Performance: Coffee and Cake, KOP, Breda
• Group show: 1 Michiel, 2 Films, 3 Friends, RUIS, Nijmegen

2018
• Group show: Join the Reunion, Kunstpodium T, Tilburg
• Costume design: OTOMAX performance, Plateaukunst
• Radio performance: Kunst is Lang, Mister Motley, Amsterdam
• Assistant producer: Dating Applicatie (film by Michiel Ubels)

2017
• Group show: Amuse, Galerie Wilms, Venlo
• Group show: Playhouse ’71–17’, Van Bommel van Dam, Venlo
• Costume design: Flintstone Fields, Maastricht
• Film tour: Anatidaefobie, Big Boys Studio, Maastricht
• Performance & costume: Parallel #4, Nieuwe Nor, Heerlen
• Group show: Anatidaefobia, Greylight Projects, Hoensbroek
• Group show: Wallpaper, Showroom MAMA
• Open studio: Atelier Mondial, Basel

2016
• Group show: Celebrating Differences, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven
• Group show: Fresh Cacao, Cacaofabriek, Helmond
• Group show: Ernstig Geschikt, Studio Omstand, Arnhem
• Graduation publication: Metropolis M
• Graduation show: Are We Having Fun Yet?, Maastricht
• Group show: De/structured, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham (UK)

2015
• Group show: Beelden op het Vrijthof, Maastricht
• Touring exhibition: Home is Where the House Is, Z33, Hasselt (BE)

FRESH KITCH

Year: 2024–ongoing
Medium: Series of sculptures
Materials: Ceramic and clay

Project Description:
The year I became a mother, time for large-scale projects was hard to come by. That’s exactly why my partner, our son Raaf, and I joined a one-week artist residency in a monastery in Tegelen—a short, focused moment to reconnect with my practice.

During that concentrated week, I transformed a kitschy secondhand figurine into a vivid, playful sculpture. The immediacy and joy of the process resonated deeply. What began as a quick, hands-on exploration has since grown into Fresh Kitch: an ongoing series of bold, colorful reinterpretations of kitsch using ceramic and clay.

With each piece, I reclaim mass-produced sentimentality and turn it into something personal, tactile, and full of character.

THE SMOELIEMOELIE

Year: 2025 (work in progress)
Medium: Large-scale sculpture
Materials: Mixed media
Collaboration with: Michiel Ubels, Odapark, Blowups

Project Description:
For the sculpture garden at Odapark in Venray, I created The Smoeliemoelie: a large, playful sculpture shaped by the imagination of local children.

Through a series of workshops, I invited children from the neighbourhood to draw, build, and brainstorm freely. I gathered hundreds of their sketches, craft projects, and ideas, and used them as raw material for the design. From this treasure chest of imagination, I created a small-scale model, which was 3D scanned and enlarged into the final sculpture.

The result is a joyful, creature-like form full of faces, limbs, colors, and textures—part monster, part friend, and entirely shaped by collective creativity. The Smoeliemoelie celebrates the boundless world of children's ideas and the power of making something big together.

TINY FRIENDS

Year: 2023–ongoing
Medium: Series of small sculptures
Materials: Ceramic and clay

Project Description:
Tiny Friends is a growing series of small-scale figures that live somewhere between the figurative and the abstract. Each one has a distinct personality—some loud and commanding, others quiet and mysterious.

They are always shown in changing constellations, inviting new dynamics and relationships to emerge between them. Who catches your eye first? Is it the bold, attention-seeking character at the front, or the soft-spoken figure hiding in the corner, waiting to be noticed?

These sculptural characters play with presence, power, and charm—posing questions about attention, hierarchy, and the poetry of the overlooked.

/

THE LEGENDARY LEKKERBEK

Year: 2022
Medium: Floating sculpture and performance
Materials: Mixed media
Presented at: Bosch Parade, ’s-Hertogenbosch
Collaboration with: Michiel Ubels & Air Design

Project Description:
For the 9th edition of Bosch Parade, themed Seduction, I teamed up with my partner in crime Michiel Ubels to create The Legendary Lekkerbek: a floating sculpture and live performance drifting through the heart of ’s-Hertogenbosch.

Inspired by the fantastical world of Hieronymus Bosch, we built a loud-mouthed, gluttonous creature that shamelessly urged the audience to give in to their cravings—for food, desire, excess.

With its oversized mouth and unapologetic appetite, The Legendary Lekkerbek was part satire, part celebration: a playful embodiment of indulgence that blurred the line between seduction and excess.

SOFT SPOT

Year: 2022-ongoing
Medium: Series of tufted textile works
Materials: Yarn, fabric backing, tufting gun

Project Description:
With Soft Spot, I explore the playful intersection of visual art and textile. Using a tufting gun, I create soft, colorful wall-based pieces that combine bold shapes with tactile textures.

My background in fashion—working as a clothing maker and designer—inspires this series. It’s a way of returning to familiar materials and techniques while stepping into a freer, more intuitive form of image-making.

Look closely, and you’ll find all kinds of creatures nestled in the tufts: tropical birds, a chubby baby, a wise old lobster. Each work is both a soft object and a visual riddle, inviting the viewer to slow down, touch, and imagine.

Soft Spot is where my past in fashion meets a sculptural, instinctive approach to art—stitched together with curiosity, color, and joy.

FOR YOUNG AND OLD

Year: 2021
Medium: Exhibition with installation and film
Location: Odapark, Venray
In collaboration with: Michiel Ubels

Project Description:
For Young and Old was a joint exhibition with artist Michiel Ubels at Odapark. The show combined playful sculptures, talking animals, soft objects, and dancing trees with a spicy, experimental documentary titled Lovers and Cameras. At first glance, these worlds might seem far apart, but they were connected by a shared curiosity: about how we love, how we dream, and how we project meaning onto everything around us.

Just like children who see faces in clouds and games in sticks and stones, we explored how adults do the same—only with a bit more complexity, and maybe a little more self-awareness.

For Young and Old was both a celebration and a wink: to the fantasy that never really leaves us, no matter how grown-up we think we are.

3D PAINTINGS

Year: 2023
Medium: Mixed media on canvas and textile
Materials: Acrylic paint, fabric, embroidery, foam

Project Description:
3D Paintings blur the line between painting and sculpture. Are they flat or three-dimensional? Wildly filled, yet carefully crafted, they carry a "soft punk" energy—unpredictable but intentional.

The contrast between vibrant colors and dense textures makes them both inviting and uneasy. They don’t give away all their secrets all at once—and that’s exactly the fun of it.

COFFEE AND CAKE

Year: 2019
Duration: 15 minutes
Collaboration with: Michiel Ubels, Fran Hoebergen

Project Description:
Coffee and Cake is a 15-minute absurdistic performance where the audience enjoys coffee and cake while being presented with a mix of fables, wisdoms, speeches, pitches, raps, recipes, mantras, incantations, poems, animal facts, and mating dances.

The performance combines playful and eclectic elements with immersive visuals, enhancing both the absurdity and the meaning of the work. Together with Michiel Ubels and Fran Hoebergen, I helped shape this experimental and humorous experience, blending art, performance, and the simple pleasure of coffee and cake into something uniquely memorable.

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

Year: 2016
Location: Fine Arts Graduation Show, Maastricht

Project Description:
For my graduation exhibition Are We Having Fun Yet?, I filled a space with a series of abstract sculptures that, while non-representational, evoke a playful and surreal atmosphere. Their forms feel both familiar and strange, creating moments of quiet humor and visual surprise.

One of the works, De Gelukkige Zak (The Happy Sack), is a folding trailer turned sculpture, containing a small screen playing a looping animation of an egg hatching, the chick growing into a chicken, and laying a new egg. The piece adds a cyclical, almost cartoon-like rhythm to the space.

Together, the works explore how abstract shapes and materials can still speak to the imagination—blurring the line between sculpture, story, and absurdity.

/

CHURCH SERVICE REMIX

Year: 2019
Duration: 90 minutes
Location: Grote Sint-Laurenskerk, Rotterdam
Collaboration with: Michiel Ubels, Fran Hoebergen

Project Description:
Church Service Remix was a one-off performance blending elements of church ritual with contemporary art and absurdist theatre. Together with Michiel Ubels and Fran Hoebergen, I helped reimagine a full church service as an audiovisual spectacle, staged in the monumental Grote Sint-Laurenskerk in Rotterdam.

Unaware churchgoers became part of a 90-minute experience filled with Bible readings, roller skating, layered visuals, spontaneous prayers, and a musical duet between a human pastor and a small robot priest. The result was a playful take on belief and tradition—mixing the sacred with the absurd in unexpected ways.