Sandra Keja Planken doesn’t just create art and collectibles—she creates worlds.

As a textile whisperer, glass shaper, and nature weaver, her work is soft, glowing, multi-layered, raw, and always just a little bit strange—in the best possible way. Her artistic language floats somewhere between textile art, design, performance, and sci-fi coral reef. Her raw structures with refined layers show all materials and their flow like the ocean does.

What begins as a single thread or shard of glass transforms into a breathing installation. Workingfrom her own studio and in collaboration with institutions like the TextielMuseumLab in Tilburg, the National Glass Museum’s GlassLab in Leerdam, and the Geldrop Weavers Museum with the new Artlab via MondiLab foundation. Sandra experiments with passementerie, tufting, glass, and weaving. Using donated, recycled, and remnant materials, she invites you to feel—not just see.

Her work is form-poetry: about transformation, connection, and the wild beauty of what lives and dies—especially underwater.

In close collaboration with institutes like Reef Renewal Bonaire & Resting Reef, she is working to obtain permits that allow her textile and glass sculptures to become underwater homes for new coral life. The intention goes beyond raising awareness through the arts—it’s about direct, regenerative action. All her structures and their rawness can host organisms on themselves, and the smooth edges use a bio-coating.

Her uniquely colorful tapestries, embracing cuddle sets, and sensual glass art dance before your eyes. All are made using both ancient and modern techniques, flanked by her hand passementerie, tufting, weaving, and glassblowing. Sandra’s installation connects the present with the past both in story and techniques. With her renowned AI videos and imagery, she has been setting the tone since 2021 in a rapidly evolving world where art and computers merge. Keja Planken’s tapestries and sculptures always begin with a signature hand drawing or AI form, but she goes much further than simply executing them in textile or glass forms. She creates embracing, organic forms. The installation was developed slowly over nearly a year, guided by flow rather than perfection. As a result it’s an experience that feels almost underwater, with floating “sound bubbles” and organic coral-like formations stretching across walls, ceilings, and floors.

By using leftover and recycled yarns and powders, she creates her one-of-a-kind pieces. It is astonishing how much texture and depth she brings into her work. Her pieces seem to flow and move, as much of the yarn is not tightly stretched, tufted, or woven, but instead mixed, rugged, and loosely hanging. The layering and raw texture of the glass gives it a dreamy, surreal quality.

Sometimes, it even appears as if light is emanating from her work. Because she works with donated residual yarn from the Textile Museum, recycled cotton and wool from your old clothes (Wolkat) via the well-known green collection bins, and recycled plastic yarn from the sea, each piece or series is unique and sustainable. The raw edges, layered colors, and unpolished sight of all materials show the abundance and over-consuming face through its new forms.