Harmke Datema-Chang makes work that operates inside the systems it questions — economic, institutional, and social. At the heart of her practice is a central tension: what gets to survive, and who decides.
Born and raised in the Netherlands with Chinese roots, she works across large-scale installation, permanent sculpture, painting, and durational performance. Her projects unfold over years, across borders, and through genuine collaboration with artists, institutions, and communities internationally.
She is the artist and author of BUY OR BURN (2021–ongoing), a durational artwork in which unsold works are publicly auctioned — and if unbought, destroyed. The audience becomes the deciding force. The stakes are real.
Her studio practice moves in the opposite direction: creation as preservation, as an insistence on what must be made, held, and carried forward. Destruction and making are two sides of the same inquiry into value, responsibility, and agency.
Alongside her artistic practice, Datema-Chang founded the Dutch branch of NoEsUnaGalería, an international community of artists dedicated to rethinking how artistic value is made, shared, and challenged.
