Colina Van Bemmel
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Jun 25
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 26
Colina Van Bemmel is a multidisciplinary artist based in Amsterdam. Her work often starts from a personal experience or observation and grows into something more open, using symbols, materials, and gestures that leave room for interpretation. After spending years in the film world, she returned to drawing, installation, and ritual-based practices that allow for slower, more intuitive ways of working. She’s interested in how people connect with themselves and each other through stories, objects, and shared moments.
Q: When you talk about the unseen, are you thinking more about inner worlds or something beyond that?
A: When I talk about the unseen, I mean both the inner and outer world, as I believe they are connected. My work often circles around the question of whether there’s a larger pattern or order that holds it all together. So while I explore psychological undercurrents, I also trace our ongoing quest to understand reality and go deeper into the unknown, building bridges between our inner and outer world. I’m drawn to this tension between the personal and the universal, and I search for a reconnection with what lies beyond objectivity.
While the inner and outer world can be seen as mirrors, it is hard to hold them both at the same time. Personally, I don’t think spiritual transcendence is the answer, because it tends to detach us from our surroundings. I believe in the power of a more embodied approach, exploring the forces that move through us when we open to deeper, older rhythms of life. This is why I am interested in the Western esoteric tradition and pagan spirituality, practices that hold the tension of both the personal and the universal.
Our inner world responds to symbolism and emotion, and that’s what I hope to evoke in others: by offering a glimpse of the invisible, art can awaken something dormant, which is both ancient and alive.
Q: How do you usually know when something intuitive is worth following further?
A: I don’t always know in a rational sense. It usually begins with an idea or a visual flash that fills me with a kind of electric excitement. It’s not calculated—more like an irresistible desire to bring something to life. That spark makes me want to explore, going into experiments that lead me somewhere I haven’t been yet.
Q: In "Wheel of Revelations", do you see masks as something protective—or freeing?
A: I see them as freeing. We usually interpret masks quite negatively, as something we wear to hide. But while they conceal the persona the world is familiar with, they can also uncover aspects of ourselves that haven’t yet been seen—even by us.
So they can give form to what is usually suppressed, allowing us to meet new aspects of ourselves as we express and integrate those hidden parts. There is a real paradox in that: masks are disguises, yet they reveal.
In "Wheel of Revelations", masks are both mirrors and thresholds. They contain psychological states too heavy or wild for the surface—for example: shame and frenzy. Masks allow us to embody what’s hidden. Even a brief encounter with a mask can mirror something within us, but by wearing it, we allow ourselves to fully embody it. "Wheel of Revelations" explores our continuous dance of personas as a moving circle that keeps turning, while I invited the spectator to draw a card and take part in this procession.
Q: What brought you back to art after focusing on filmmaking—was there a moment that made it clear?
A: Let me start by saying that I also consider film an art form, and I love its ability to connect meaning across time, image, and sound. I still take on work as a film editor and genuinely enjoy that creative process in which all the elements come together. But when I directed my documentary, I realised that the hierarchical structure of filmmaking didn’t suit me. I was looking for a more physical and intuitive form of expression.
Part of this shift was also a response to the increasingly digital world we live in. Moving images are everywhere now, and I felt a need to counterbalance that overwhelm with something slower, more tactile.
I’ve come to love working with physical materials because they give feedback as I work, revealing what essence is already present. The Greeks called this "poiesis": a philosophical approach not about imposing one’s will, but building a relationship with the material, cultivating it, and allowing the work’s nature to emerge.
Q: Has working with both film and visual art changed how you think about structure and flow?
A: Yes, absolutely. Working in film taught me how to work with intention and structure. I used to resist structure, seeing it only as a limitation. Now I’ve come to realise it offers a different kind of freedom: a grounded freedom.
So as I continue my art practice, I feel I am more aware of what I am doing and why—even though the outcome is not something I know very clearly. I tend to work in frameworks that allow moments of openness and flow to emerge. Now I can dive into that flow and forget about the world, knowing there’s always a bridge back.
Q: What helps you stay connected to mystery in a world that often demands clarity?
A: Honestly, the deep belief that mystery is essential to a meaningful life. When I look around, I feel we're on the verge of a new wave of Romanticism, as an intuitive response to the dominance of data, analysis, and quantification in our time. Imagination allows us to access truths that the rational mind cannot hold. Without mystery, the world becomes industrialised and objectified—even nature reduced to a problem to be solved. But humans are rooted in something older: in ritual, rhythm, symbols, and cycles. We need to find a way to re-enchant the world and ourselves, to be able to truly care for it.
I know what it feels like to feel deeply connected to the world. And I also know the feeling of losing that connection. For me, art, music, nature, and ritual have been ways to restore it. My hope is that my work can help others in a similar way—not by offering answers, but by creating space for wonder and a reimagining of our place in a complex and shifting world.
