“My sculptures are gravity-defying, organic forms that combine industrial and transparent materials to imagine monuments
from a future heritage.”
GRAVITY FORMS
— Sculptures of Emergent Heritage
Harmke Datema-Chang creates large-scale, organic sculptures that negotiate gravity, light, and mass. Combining steel, concrete, epoxy, and transparent elements, her works resemble artifacts from an imagined future—celebrating a new form of heritage rooted in emergence rather than tradition.
Medium: Large-scale sculpture; steel, concrete, epoxy, spray paint, transparent elements
Scale: Architectural / outdoor / site-responsive
Status: Ongoing
RITUAL PAINTINGS
— Creation as Counter-Force
Definition:
These works are created through intuitive, ritual-based processes in which painting becomes an act of protection, resistance, and transformation. The body is central: gestures are instinctive, layered, and often repetitive, allowing the surface to absorb tension rather than resolve it.
Conceptual Core:
Creation as an intentional response to destructive forces — personal, social, or systemic.
Medium: Painting, mixed media on canvas / panel
Status: Ongoing studio practice
Function: Intimate, autonomous works
BUY OR BURN
— Performative Systems & Public Risk
Definition:
BUY OR BURN is a long-term performative artwork that stages a public auction in which unsold works are destroyed, forcing audiences to confront questions of value, authorship, preservation, and complicity.
Conceptual Core:
Who decides what survives? What does ownership mean when destruction is a real outcome?
Medium: Performative auction, installation, video, text
Status: 2019–ongoing
Function: Public, discursive, institutional-scale work
“BUY OR BURN is my long-term artistic work. I began it five years ago as a response to how value, authorship, and survival operate in the art world. Every edition is a continuation of that same artwork.”