Question time: A lecture by Yolande van der Heide

That Time When We Were Not There

Hear our Creative New Zealand Te Manu Ka Tau international guest Yolande van der Heidi introduce their curatorial work through the lens of the Artspace Aotearoa 2025 annual question “is language large enough?”. Yolande will present on the Van Abbemuseum collection display they are curating with the working title That Time When We Were Not There. This exhibition explores the concept of time and how we tell stories through it, focusing on how time feels rather than how it is measured. The large-scale exhibition is organised around four research threads: unchronological time regenerative time, public time and Comic time, each with an artist interlocutor.

This kaupapa is presented with Creative New Zealand Toi Aotearoa and in association with Te Papa Tongarewa and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.

The lecture will be followed by a Q&A.

Booking is encouraged but not essential.

WHAT TO EXPECT

This event is free.
This event is held in the gallery at Artspace Aotearoa.
This location is accessible.
This event will be seated and microphones will be used.
Light refreshments will be available.

BIOGRAPHY

Yolande joined the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven in 2020 as senior exhibitions curator. Prior to this role she was deputy director at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Utrecht where she started as an intern in 2008. In her role as curator at Van Abbemuseum she has developed solo exhibitions with Ima-Abasi Okon (2025), Sung Hwan Kim (2023–2024), and the group exhibition Positions #7: Everything worthwhile is done with other people (2023), and collection exhibition A Lasting Truth Is Change (2022), for which she co-edited the eponymous publication. Additionally, Yolande is co-editor to Laure Prouvost, This Means Love (2021) and Unlearning Exercises: Art Organizations as Sites for Unlearning (2018). She is a member of the editorial board of L’Internationale Online and board member at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam.