About Sandra
Sandra Keja Planken is a Dutch multidisciplinary artist and designer whose practice spans contemporary tapestry, textile art, glass, objects, and spatial installations. Her work explores shifting states of mind in dialogue with nature, creating anthropomorphic entities that invite tactile, visual, and emotional engagement.
Her current large-scale installation Nature’s Visual Sound premiered at Amsterdam Art 2025 and is evolving into ecological infrastructure: underwater-capable textile and glass reefscapes designed to host coral and marine life. Upcoming highlights include her even larger solo installation at BIG ART Amsterdam (September 2025).
Keja Planken has received wide recognition, including being named Talent of 2024 by The New York Times, presented as a top talent to Queen Máxima of the Netherlands in 2023, and awarded No. 1 Exhibit at Salone del Mobile by Elle Decor and No. 1 Dutch Design Presentation by Elle Decor and Collectible. Her work has been featured in AD China, AD Japan, AD Italy, Elle Decor Italy, Roel Decor UK, Stirpad, Frame Magazine, FD Magazine, and Volkskrant Magazine, among others.
These last few years she has been trained at the TextielLab by its Lab Experts of the Dutch Textile Museum to experiment with old and new textile techniques and the Glass Lab of the National Glass Museum by Gert Bullee, where she continues to research redolent & recycled f ibers and glass-making. Although largely autodidact, these institutional collaborations allow her to merge traditional craftsmanship with experimental ecological design.
Before focusing fully on her art, she ran her design studio Noun for 15 years, transforming forgotten interiors and public buildings into immersive environments, and worked on creative campaigns for brands like Greenpeace or ADE. A pivotal accident in 2019 shifted her trajectory toward her independent art practice, rooted in material experimentation and ecological awareness. Today she lives and works in Amsterdam in her lush studio, where she continues to merge recycled glass, rope, textiles, and remnants into installations that question fragility, resilience, and the possibility of art as habitat.
Poetic statement:
I imagine a world where art breathes underwater,
Where sculpted forms drift like memory,
Woven from the remnants of waste and wonder,
Where what was once discarded becomes sacred.
Beneath the surface,
My sculptures reach not only toward the eye,
But toward life itself.
They invite coral and other life to settle,
Algae to bloom,
And stories to root in silence.
Each thread, each curve, each shard of glass and textile,
Is a gesture of repair,
A promise to the ocean that we still remember her voice and rhythm,
That beauty can also be useful, That stillness can seed change.
This is not just art or design for the eye,
It is a habitat,
A ritual,
A voice beneath the waves,
Speaking of resilience, renewal, and return.
