Pia Louwerens

Pia Louwerens is a Dutch artist-researcher and writer living in Brussels. In her artistic practice, she investigates how art institutions and the subject - the "I" who writes, speaks and makes - influence each other. Pia sees this influence as a complex network of intertextual references and dependencies, a "script" she writes into by way of performances and written text.

During her residency, Pia will research the methodology of fanfiction: fan-produced work (usually stories, sometimes images or podcasts) that reinterpret, transform and extend the original texts. She is particularly interested in the role of genre and tropes, the affective qualities of fanfiction, the reciprocal relationship between reading and writing, and fanfiction as a form of critique of the source text.

Pia (1990, Netherlands) holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and a laureate of a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies): a post-master program for artistic research in Brussels. From 2019-2020, Pia was a researcher on an NWO-funded project in the Netherlands, on the basis of which she published the book 'I'm Not Sad, The World Is Sad' in 2021: an autotheoretical, semi-fictional novel about her work as an 'embedded' researcher at an art institution. In 2023, Pia researched "Lesbisch Archief Leeuwarden" (Lesbian Archives Leeuwarden) with Katinka van Gorkum at Kunsthuis SYB (Beeststerzwaag). Besides her art practice, Pia works as a freelance art critic for De Witte Raaf, Tubelight and Metropolis M, among others, and in 2023 as a transition manager for a.pass.