Press release
Sandra Keja Planken unveils more of her Nature’s Visual Sound at BIG ART, Amsterdam
Amsterdam, October 2025
During this year’s edition of BIG ART, Dutch artist Sandra Keja Planken presented her monumental installation Nature’s Visual Sound: an immersive textile and glass environment where poetic imagination meets ecological urgency.
Composed of large-scale sculptural forms woven from passementerie, cords, recycled and remnant yarns, tufting, and blown glass, Nature’s Visual Sound echoes the rhythms of coral reefs and oceanic life. The installation transformed and abandoned architectural space into a sensory environment into an underwater world above water.
Yet the project extends beyond aesthetics. Nature’s Visual Sound is rooted in a tangible ecological mission: 10% of all proceeds are invested in the final underwater installations, designed together with marine biologists and ecological partners in Bonaire and Mexico. Some of these sculptural “Nani pillars” and textile-glass organisms will function as future reef habitats, coated with bio-safe materials to host heat-resilient corals and contribute to the regeneration of fragile ecosystems.
“Art can be both a vessel for imagination and a catalyst for change,” says Keja Planken. “With Nature’s Visual Sound, I want to create beauty that doesn’t stop at representation, but actively participates in rebuilding what is at risk of being lost.”
Urgency: Since 1950, more than 50% of global coral has been lost. By 2050, up to 90% may disappear. Corals die silently. Here, art becomes both the message above and under water
Nature’s Visual Sound is a living series
The installation includes sculptural entities with hybrid names that fuse memory, ecology, and imagination:
- Alien Plantlife Vessels – echoing Fungia corals
- Do We Eat Our Corals – Montipora forms
- Dripping Corals – Acropora millepora textures
- Vesicularia Textile Sculptures – seaweed/algae worlds
- Coralbutterfly – fragile hope
- Hanging Nani – slow and soft growth
- Valorosavida – an invented species, deserving protection
Each object is both an artwork and a future host: dynamic entities that invite tactile, visual, and emotional interaction, shifting between art, design, and living architecture.
About the Artist
Sandra Keja Planken is a Dutch artist whose practice moves between design, sculpture, and ecological engagement. She creates textile and glass organisms that act as both contemporary art and future habitat. As Stirpad Magazine observed: “Sandra makes work about how moods constantly change, like the materials and forces of nature. Her entities invite you to take part instead of merely observing.”
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including PAN Amsterdam, Collectible Brussels, Salone del Mobile, Dutch Design Week, Design Biënnale Rotterdam, and institutions such as the TextielMuseum Tilburg and Nationaal Glasmuseum Leerdam. She collaborates with these museums not only to experiment but also to reuse their surplus yarns and glass shards—transforming remnants into new futures.
Over the past five years, her work has been shown at Rhett Baruch Gallery (Los Angeles), Isola Gallery (Milan), The Huidenclub (Rotterdam), Atkris at PAN Amsterdam, NewHouse Gallery (Amsterdam), and her own Messmerizing Gallery.
About BIG ART
BIG ART is an annual art fair in Amsterdam, presenting large-scale works of contemporary art and design in distinctive architectural locations. Sandra presented the installation with Newhouse Gallery
Press & Contact
For more information, images, or interviews: