works – Lily Lanfermeijer

In-this-place-Toyobo-prints-on-Hahnemuhle-paper-cardboard-boxes-2025

Image of

Works made during the Artist in Residence (AiR) program of AGA LAB which offers a special context for research, experimenting and the development of new work. AGA LAB stimulates research and experimentation in the field of ink, colour and image carriers, as well as crossovers between other disciplines materials and techniques.

The works created are made using the Toyobo printing technique. This project documents In this place, where Lily Lanfermeijer reimagined puntWG as a functional package delivery point, transforming the space into a hub of everyday exchanges. By embedding an operational system within an art context, the project explores intersections between utility, community, and the rhythms of daily life. Seen through the lens of family, the work highlights how parcels are more than objects in transit: they are tokens of care, reminders of presence, and extensions of relationships across distance. Each act of sending, receiving, or collecting a package mirrors familiar gestures within family life—trust, responsibility, and the desire to stay connected.

In this place, puntWG, New-Tennants Exhibition, photo by Studio Plancius

Image of

This project reimagined puntWG as a functional package delivery point, transforming the space into a hub of everyday interactions and logistical flows. By temporarily integrating an operational system within an art context, the project examines intersections between utility, community, and the puntWG artspace. Packages are tangible representations of connectivity in a globalized and digital world, symbolizing trust, exchange, and material culture. The installation frames these ordinary interactions receiving, sorting, and picking up parcels—as performative gestures within an artistic narrative.

Operating system by Dpd Nederland. Curated by AtelierWG: Hans den Hartog Jager, Jacob Dwyer, Wasco, Gilleam Trappenberg

Mothers-Shoes-Gallery-van-Fanny-Freytag-photo-by-Fabian-Landewee-installation-view-2025-scaled

Image 1 of 9

One Topples, the Other Falls, ceramics, WARP, Sint-Niklaas, 2023

Image of

‘One topples, the Other Falls’ is a series of five large outdoor sculptures, based on spinning tops from various eras, decorated with different 20-century patterns and matching colours. A toy children would typically play with in the streets (some even keeping their spin for over 14 metres or more), the spinning top could be seen as an instrument for exploration and indirect play; leading you to new and exciting places. Originating in the 1970’s, indirect play was an important and prominent concept in the reimagining of playgrounds into playscapes. This included the introduction of objects to play with that didn’t directly tell you how to play with them and offered a wide range of open-ended options that allowed people to be creative and use their imagination. Some pressed into Styrofoam moulds, others built by hand, ‘One topples, the Other Falls’ uses tactility and scale as a way to create ornamental objects that invite a form of playfulness again.

2x5, W139 Hosts

Image of

During the weekend of 12th and 13th of march Lily Lanfermeijer, Smári Rúnar Róbertsson and Nína Harra produced a banner of 1.5 by 70 meters long, the total length of their studio home complex.

The banner hung from their building on April 15th 2022, the day the judge declared the verdict on their precarious housing contracts. Today, the banner has been reworked into a scroll, a decree, a proclamation.

A section of a living chain 2021

Image 1 of 4

Detail, Wood, Ceramics, Beads, Metal, photo by Kyle Tryhorn

Writing is drawing is speaking, 2020

Image 1 of 3

Video documentation of clay workshop for 11-13 year olds at Framer Framed, Hand model Tamara Laaper

Together with Romaisae Boukalil; Finja Bertrang; Soung Paing Khant Kyaw; Bernice Grootfaam; Fleur Tuin; Kevin Spanjaart; Milana Kosanovic; Noble Ekwueme; Gigi Sno; Kyara Wolf; Huiwen Li; Jasmijn Kruisheer; Salma Ennali; Arthur Janzen and Aaliyah Ahmed from the Ijburg College Amsterdam we made 3 communal sculptures at Framer Framed Amsterdam.

3 groups of 5 kids made a cone-like base shape of + – 35 cm high. This shape is seen as a pedestal, for a ‘miniature group-exhibition’. Meaning each student created something to put on the ‘pedestal’ or basic shape that we can walk around, and look at from multiple angles.

Many thanks to intern Tamara Laaper.

I laughed "To hell with them" I said, Act Table / 4, 2019

Image 1 of 6

Katrein Breukers, Lily Lanfermeijer

A collaboration between Katrein Breukers and Lily Lanfermeijer.

I drove home. I had my jacket off and my sleeves rolled up, I wore a pair of faded jeans. I parked my car and found a stack of flyers lying deserted in the street, still wrapped in plastic. When I got home I opened my windows and waited for something to happen. I waited a long time.

I went into the studio, a garden house, stationed myself behind the desk and poured myself a cup of coffee. I placed it on the board of a game we played yesterday. I picked the cup up again and placed it on the novel ‘Attar of Roses’ before I took a sip. Two circled ochre brown stains were left behind. I looked at the chair, some of the leather had been scarred. Did I do that?

It was nine o’clock when I finally got the call, I picked up, with gold leaf attached to my hand. I laughed. “To hell with them” I said. I walked out, leaving the door open.

For the exhibition in the kitchen, Katrein and Lily started a new collaboration. Inspired by the detective game Cluedo and the classic detective novel, they became interested in treating the exhibition space as a place for remains or traces of previous events. Can we find hidden or forgotten actions within the confines of our own studio?

Table act 5 2019,

Image 1 of 5

Wood, Ceramics, Rope, pigmented cotton, Fotopub, Novo Mesto, Photo: Eva Hoonhout

‘LOST IN DEPICTION / part one and two’

Curated by: Eva Hoonhout

Group show with : Caz Egelie, Lily Lanfermeijer, Dan Adlesic and Eva Hoonhout

For the exhibition at Fotopub Lanfermeijer created an installation consisting of wooden tabletops, ceramics and fresco paintings on jute. Homemade egg tempera paint, often applied with delicate brushes, is applied on the plaster shapes with a large roller that would normally be used to paint the walls of contemporary interiors. The works are inspired by a broad range of fields ranging from public murals, tableware found in kitchen cupboards to the images found on printed t-shirts. One of the characteristics of mural painting, outdoor advertisements or even printed t-shirts is that the architectural elements of a given body or space are incorporated into it’s reading and vice versa, either resulting in harmonious or conflicting combinations. Lanfermeijer describes these combinations as ‘morphing experiences’ and she often deploys these same processes of absorption in the presentation of her works. There is no hierarchy among her objects; furniture, pedestal or artwork are all equally important in her installations.

Lily & Mila Lanfermeijer, Faux Syrup Angel, 2019,

Image 1 of 14

Exhibition View, Punt WG

Lily and Mila Lanfermeijer are interested in the intimate act of exchange that is an inherent part in the use of applied techniques. Next to their individual practices they have been collaborating on several projects since 2014. Their practices overlap in dealing with questions regarding the relationship between the usable and the autonomous object and ideas circling around (shared) authorship.

For Punt WG they’ve created an installation consisting of several textile works, pieces of furniture and sculptural works that draw inspiration from the concept of modern folklore. Different processes of transmission, through material, verbal or customary form were the point of departure.

In “The Craftsmen” Richard Sennet writes that when slamming a nail with a hammer, the hammer becomes an extension of the craftsman’s mind, his thoughts between the hammer itself and the nail it will make contact with. Similarly, when collaborating and in the process of communicating what was previously in the makers mind, a space is created that is not merely one individuals thinking but somewhere in-between two minds.

For this exhibition a new series of ‘layered paintings’ was created through the use of kalamkari, a precise drawing technique using a bamboo stick that is practiced in India, often solely by men. While researching this craft that blurs the boundaries between pattern making and painting Mila became interested in the use of perspective and the expression of fabric within the tradition of painting and it’s connection to wealth and skill in different geological, historical or religious contexts. Hand drawn copies of traditional fabrics are combined with drawings based on images from hobby books, vintage fashion magazines and commercial advertisement. A lot of the imagery circles around personal adornment, which has historically been one of the main outlets of female artistic expression. Symbols are abstracted into patterns to create new compositions. Lily’s braided pieces that draw inspiration from various fields, ranging from fashion, to religion, bakery and rope knotting, are combined into clay ornaments.

A table can have many functions depending on context, its form and the environment it exists in.
It can be a border or a shared object depending on the relationship with its users. In that sense the table can work as an arena for things to take place. By using precise measurements and dimensions Lily has created tabletops that can be connected into different shapes and adjusted to suit several situations or functions. The tops act as sculptures in the room, waiting to be activated through their use. The shapes and uses vary, from allowing one person to sit across from two at a distance, to a conference shape with a central focus point, to a lower form where the user must kneel down. During the exhibition the table tops and table legs will change formation; in this way shifting the perspective on the tables through the activation or deactivation of the tabletops.

The slight and subtle changes in form find their origin in pottery, and refer to the transformation of one shape into the next. The medative variations in the shape of the table legs are closely related
to the making of vases on the pottery wheel. Through the use of a chisel, pieces of wood have been removed to create similar forms, only now they are not built up from the wet clay but excavated out of the soft pine.

This exhibition was generously supported by het Amsterdamse Fonds voor de Kunst.