Eva Margaretha
I explore what is passed from one generation to the next.
Who are you?
Where do you come from?
What do you carry with you,
and what do you pass on?
MY PRACTICE
My work explores how personal and collective histories continue to shape the present. I am particularly interested in what is passed from one generation to the next: memories and stories, but also silences, loss, displacement and ways of seeing ourselves and one another.
My own Indo-European family history forms an important point of departure. Through archival and genealogical research, photographs, documents, conversations and personal stories, I investigate histories shaped by colonialism, migration and displacement, and the ways these histories continue to resonate across generations.
RESEARCH & MAKING
Research and making are closely connected in my practice.
I work across painting, drawing, photography, cyanotype, text, sound and installation, often bringing historical material into dialogue with contemporary images, personal experiences and the people whose stories I encounter.
Portraiture plays an important role: the individual face becomes a way of approaching histories that are larger than one person or one family.
Rather than reconstructing the past, I am interested in what remains of it in the present; in bodies, relationships, identities and silences. By bringing fragments of personal and historical material together, my work creates space for recognition, new perspectives and stories that have long remained unseen or unheard.
ARTIST
Eva Margaretha (Leiden, 1984) is a Dutch visual artist and artistic researcher. Her work begins with people.
For many years, portraiture formed the foundation of her practice. Through large-scale drawings and paintings in charcoal and Indian ink, she explored human presence, not through likeness alone, but through what a face, a gaze or a gesture can carry.
Over time, her curiosity shifted from the person portrayed to the stories behind them. A face led to a family, a history, a place of origin. What began as an autonomous practice in painting and drawing gradually developed into an interdisciplinary artistic research practice in which visual art, archives, family histories and encounters with others come together.
Her own Indo-European family history gave this development a new depth. A personal search for her origins led her into archives, historical documents and family stories connected to the former Dutch East Indies. There she became increasingly interested not only in what has been preserved, but in what is missing: lives only partially recorded, names that disappeared and experiences that continued to resonate across generations.
Today, her practice brings together visual art, archival research, personal histories and encounters with others. Rather than reconstructing history, Margaretha uses art to create space in which personal stories can connect to larger histories and in which what has remained unseen or unspoken can be looked at again.
A NAME / A LINEAGE
Eva Margaretha is a name I chose to carry forward.
Margaretha belonged to my maternal line, an Indonesian woman whose life left only faint traces in the archives. Her name connects me to the women who came before me — women whose lives were shaped by colonial history, migration, loss and resilience, but whose stories were often only partially recorded.
Researching my own family history became a way of looking beyond the names and dates that survived. Who were these women? What did they experience, carry with them and pass on, even when their stories were not told?
In 2026, I began working under the name Eva Margaretha. Not to become someone else, but to make that lineage visible. Her name now travels with mine.
Kinderen van Jombang, 2026
installation, mixed media
SELECTED
2026
PASAR Leiden, World Museum, Leiden — Kinderen van Jombang
2026
Galerie Wind, Rotterdam — De kracht van transgenerationele overdracht: nenek, ibu, anak, cucu — solo exhibition
2024–2026
BIG ART Amsterdam & Rotterdam — artworks, live painting & installations
2025
Museum ’t Schip, Amsterdam — Een blauwdruk van jou, commissioned for Amsterdam 750
2024
Women in Art, De Hallen Amsterdam — exhibition and masterclasses in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum
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