At the heart of Joana Schneider’s artistic practice lies world building. Her works unfold like portals, opening onto imagined realities formed through immersive storytelling. Guided by curiosity, attentive observation and a deep sensitivity to the unseen layers of experience, she creates spacious installations and sculptural environments that intertwine themes from natural and fictional realms. Her practice is softly shaped by narratives built around characters of collective imagination whose presence lends a quiet strength and tenderness to the realities she envisions.

She approaches matter as a companion in an ongoing experiment. Marine debris, pigments, and tactile surfaces become carriers of meaning, echoing landscapes both real and dreamed. Her installations often appear as if they are mid-transformation: Forms growing, dissolving, or drifting toward another state of being. Rather than offering fixed meanings, her pieces function as gently unsettled spaces where human and non-human presences coexist. Visitors linger in these worlds, sensing stories that hover just out of reach yet remain profoundly familiar.

One moves through her work as though entering a dream one half-remembers, welcomed into environments that breathe, shift, and murmur with possibility. In Schneider’s hands, world building becomes an act of care and attentiveness, imagining realities that illuminate the beauty of our surroundings and celebrate the transformative power of imagination.

Joana Schneider

KNSM-Laan 125 Amsterdam
joana@joanaschneider.nl