opening 1 november, 17.00 - 19.30 

Imagine the weather invading your screen: fog slowly covering the interface, and strong winds fueling digital wildfires that blur the browser.

In Tensed Screen, Noor Nuyten’s new exhibition at Upstream Gallery, the climate does not stop at the edge of the screen; it infiltrates our devices, our gestures, and our timelines. The show explores the frictions inherent in the screens we hold in our hands daily.

For over a decade, Nuyten has been questioning the structures that shape our daily lives - time, language, and digital interaction - giving them playful, poetic, and tangible shapes. Materials lie at the core of Nuyten’s practice. As a contemporary alchemist, she rethinks matter through the lens of sustainability, generating alternatives to the linear economy.

Her work is rooted in a conceptual practice of sustainable collaboration, which ties in with traditions that resist the myth of the solitary genius. Each artwork is a constellation of voices, co-produced with clockmakers, engineers, 3D printers, ecologists, and activists, embodied by the signature ‘NN+.’

This new body of work at Upstream Gallery, from prismatic glass objects to 3D-printed reliefs with NN-Matterial and e-waste, calls for reclaiming our devices as ecological, embodied artifacts rather than mere portals to the virtual. The exhibition invites us to imagine the invisible tensions and movements within our devices and the materials they contain. Playful yet critical, the works intertwine climate and technology, urging us to trace physical paths, resist automation, and reconsider how we move, sense, and find meaning within these systems.

Tensed Screen also marks the launch of Nuyten’s first monograph, Digital Dust and Other Stories*, developed with writer and curator Marian Cousijn, designer Chantal Hendriksen, and publisher JapSam Books. Both the exhibition and the book reflect on the role of fiction in her work and underscore that the word “solo” does not exist in Nuyten’s practice. The book* serves as a compass to the exhibition: some artworks act as protagonists in Cousijn’s texts, while others emerge from her fictions.

This exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Mondrian Fund.

*Digital Dust and Other Stories. Noor Nuyten

artist Noor Nuyten text Marian Cousijn compilation & editing Noor Nuyten, Marian Cousijn, Eleonoor Jap Sam, Chantal Hendriksen translation Robert van de Walle image editors Noor Nuyten, Marian Cousijn, Chantal Hendriksen final editing Eleonoor Jap Sam design Studio Hendriksen lithography, printing robstolk ® Amsterdam binding Boekbinderij Abbringh publisher Jap Sam Books / japsambooks.nl

11.8 x 18 cm 280 pages
English | hardcover
ISBN 978-94-93329-33-1
Fall / Winter 2025 €29.50

Made possible with the support of Mondrian Fund, Jaap Harten Fonds, het Cultuurfonds, Stichting Niemeijer Fonds, Upstream Gallery Amsterdam

Digital Dust and Other Stories is the first monograph on the work of Dutch artist Noor Nuyten (b. 1986, NL), offering an overview of her practice and body of work.

noornuyten.nl
cousijn.com
studiohendriksen.com
upstreamgallery.nl