Captivating an Invisible Life — Lisse, 2019–2021
What does it mean to preserve something that cannot be seen? This large-scale permanent sculpture grew from a collaboration between art and microbiology — two disciplines that share the obsession with what escapes the eye, and the same urgent question of what is worth holding onto. As project leader and visual artist, Datema-Chang worked with students of Fioretti College in Lisse through an interdisciplinary program in which scientific and artistic research pushed against each other and informed one another. The work that emerged is an act of preservation — making the hidden world permanent, insisting on its value before it disappears. Commissioned with an art budget honored by the work organization HLT and the municipality of Lisse.
When the Tree Keeps His Wings — Woudrichem, 2015–2016
What is at risk when something is forced to stay in one place? This large-scale sculpture in steel and plastic holds that question permanently in the landscape of Woudrichem. As project leader and visual artist, Datema-Chang guided the work from first concept to final installation — a piece caught between rootedness and flight, between what is fixed and what still reaches. To preserve movement in something immovable is its own kind of risk. The sculpture insists on both. Commissioned by Policy Officer Art and Culture Annemarie Stigter and the municipality of Woudrichem.
Captivating Further Dimensions — Den Haag & travelling, 2023–ongoing
Unlike anything else in Datema-Chang's practice, this sculpture moves. Shown at Voorhout Monumentaal in Den Haag — one of the Netherlands' most respected outdoor sculpture presentations, hosted by Pulchri Studio — it does not stay. It travels across the country, appearing in one place and then another, available and yet never quite locatable. You know it exists. You cannot be sure where it stands today.
That unpredictability is not incidental — it is the work. A sculpture that refuses to be fixed in place asks a different question about value and preservation than one anchored to a single site. What does it mean to own something that keeps moving? What does it mean to preserve something that is, by nature, elsewhere? Captivating Further Dimensionscontinues Datema-Chang's sustained inquiry into what escapes immediate perception — but here, the thing that escapes is the work itself.
A New History — Almere, 2020–2022
Who gets to decide what history is worth keeping? And what is lost when that decision is made without you? This large-scale project for Almere Poort began with those questions and refused easy answers. As project leader and visual artist, Datema-Chang collaborated closely with Door Heijne and Jephta Hermelink, bringing together pupils from pre-vocational secondary education and local residents to research their own cultural backgrounds at the Tropenmuseum. What emerged is a work built from the tension between personal memory and public space — individual stories that carry their own value, preserved together in a form that refuses to let them be forgotten. Supported by grants from the Cultural Participation Fund and the Cultural Fund Almere.
