Using the iPad to view the embedded video in the History, Heritage and the Lower East Side series.

ART CV

Dutch-born New York multidisciplinary visual artist Yona Verwer creates works that explore identity, immigration, ecology, heritage, and spirituality.

Sourcing from a variety of cultures, she works in a varied range of media and materials, among them painting, installations, new media and video.

Her current works consist of contemplative semi-abstract sculptural wall works. Verwer builds canvasses that break through the painting’s normative flat surface to reveal hidden layers. Her textured surfaces often approach a language of their own. These works articulate various overlapping themes: mystical subject matter and eco art.

Verwer holds a master’s degree in fine art from the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, and has shown in over 30 museum exhibitions, as well as many galleries, nationally and internationally.

Her work has been recognized internationally through exhibitions at the Jerusalem Biennale, Andy Warhol Factory, Reginald Lewis Museum of African-American Art, Yeshiva University Museum, Ein Harod Museum, the Bronx Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, Mizel Museum, Stanback Museum, Canton Museum of Art, and the Holocaust Memorial Center.

She has been published in 4 languages, including the New York Times by William Zimmer, The New Yorker by Boris Fishman, Art Criticism by Matthew Baigell, as well as Ars Judaica, The Huffington Post, NRC Handelsblad, and The Daily News.

Verwer is also featured in Matthew Baigell’s Jewish Identity in American Art: A Golden Age since the 1970s, and Ori Soltes’ Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art and Architecture.

Besides paintings and installations she is doing interactive, collaborative works, incorporating digital painting collage and acrylic paint on canvas with Augmented Reality. Using an iPad or smart-phone, the viewer triggers videos embedded in the artwork, embarking on a discovery process that leads the viewer closer to experiencing the themes of the work.

With artist Katarzyna Kozera she collaborated on the series “The Book of Yona”, which weaves together their stories as immigrants with the biblical story of Yona’s namesake the prophet Jonah (Yona).

With artist Cynthia Beth Rubin their series “History, Heritage and the Lower East Side” blends the stories of past immigrations and the present in layers of paint, photographs, video, recordings, and music. Working with Jewish architecture from throughout the world, this work evokes the traces of melded histories.

Their latest collaboration (with web designer Kris Tonski) is the interactive website Zodiacs and the Lower East Side