11 september 2026, Martine Bontjes
The studio of… Simone Post
Inside a former harbour warehouse in Rotterdam, Simone Post creates her flowing textile landscapes and other whimsical worlds. As her team continues to grow, her studio now spans three units. For her first solo exhibition at Rademakers Gallery, Post explores the endless possibilities of textile. Alongside several new three dimensional sculptures, the birds from her recent window installation at Hermès also return, this time on canvas. Post challenges the idea that material becomes worthless once it loses its original function. Furthermore, the exhibition is an invitation to let go of expectations and to be surprised by the possibilities that emerge when we are willing to step into the unknown. ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ opens on Saturday 12 September at 15:00.
Can you describe your studio in Rotterdam? Who and what surrounds you there?
I am based in an old department store that once served as a storage warehouse for the harbour. When the building was made available by the municipality, all kinds of creative entrepreneurs, emerging businesses, artists and other makers were able to build their own spaces here. It is a wonderful collective building filled with different people. One person works with ceramics, another with steel. Good friends of mine from art school are still based here as well. We started with one space and have gradually expanded. At the moment, I have three units at my disposal. We have a large storage area where we keep used materials. We also have various turntables that we use to wrap and cut the textile into strips, as well as a space where I draw with textile. I have five permanent employees and often one or two interns. At the moment, I also have two additional freelance people working with us, so there are around nine of us in total.
Simone Post, Dracaena, Rademakers GalleryIs this studio your dream studio, or do you sometimes dream of a different space?
No, I absolutely love being here and I can do great work in this space, but I do dream of a much larger studio. At the moment, I work with candy in Schiedam and with textiles in Rotterdam. I dream of a place where I could bring all of that together, where I could make even larger works and where it would not be unbearably hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. It would also be wonderful to enjoy a little more daylight, which would bring even more inspiration.
Congratulations on your first solo exhibition at Rademakers Gallery! For this exhibition you explore the endless potential of textile. Are you primarily interested in the possibilities the material offers, or in the stories that textiles carry with them?
For me, textile is an incredibly valuable material. If you look back to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it was one of the most labour intensive materials to produce. With cotton, for example, you first have to harvest the fibres from the plant. They then need to be washed and combed. After that, they must be spun into thread, which in turn has to be woven. Producing a piece of cotton fabric is actually incredibly expensive. Yet today, much of the textile used for clothing is almost treated as a disposable product, which I find such a shame. Textiles carry so many personal stories.
I was raised in a family in which textile has always played an important role. My grandmother had to work full time in textile factories from the age of twelve. My grandfather worked for the trade union representing textile workers and my mother gave sewing lessons from home so people could make their own clothes. Textile is therefore deeply woven into my daily life. It is a material that feels very close to me.
Simone Post, Climbing Tree on the Dune Path, Rademakers GalleryYou are sometimes described as a product designer. To what extent do you still recognise yourself in that title? Your work seems to have developed from designing individual objects towards creating complete worlds and immersive experiences.
Yes, that is because I graduated from the Design Academy, but I do not really feel at home within that world anymore. I originally studied fashion and later went on to the Design Academy. Over time, I moved further and further away from applied design because I realised that, for me, it is much more about finding a different way of looking at the world around us. I have found that this way of working suits me best outside the broader system.
In the beginning, I did explore collaborations as a product designer. Occasionally, that might still work if a client is closely aligned with what I do and truly understands me. But I often found that I had to compromise too much on my ideas and that, ultimately, the aim was too often to sell more. That is simply not why I make things. I make things because I enjoy doing so, and much of that enjoyment lies in the act of making it self. That is also something I want to share with others. For that reason, I would not describe myself as a product designer anymore.
You describe ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ as an invitation to wander and embrace the unknown. Why is that important to you? What can emerge when we surrender ourselves to the unknown?
I think it is enormously important because, to me, life itself is an unknown path. I think life is one long lesson in learning to let go and trying to enjoy the present moment. You never know what tomorrow will bring, yet we often behave as though we are very much in control of everything. If you can embrace the unknown, you accept that you never know exactly where things will lead you. You have to wait and see where they take you. The unknown requires a certain courage to dive into the deep end, because that is often where you experience the most beautiful things.
I think we live in a time where we have to deal with a lot expectations, at the same time, we believe that our lives are entirely within our control. We think we are entitled to more and more things, even though that is not self-evident at all. These expectations also shape the way we look at materials. Much material is labelled as waste as soon as it no longer fits within a production process or a system of consumption. From that moment onwards, it suddenly appears to be worthless. But it is actually strange to dismiss a material as worthless so easily. If you look at something without expectations, you may discover something beautiful still lying there, a material with qualities and possibilities that can be explored in countless ways. Expectations can narrow our view and make us believe that something no longer has value, even when that value is still there.
That is why I think it is important to remain open in the way we look at things. Perhaps you can live a happier life when you do not always hold on to expectations and allow room for uncertainty.
Simone Post, Confetti amid Rocks and a River Column, Rademakers GalleryYou work not only with textile remnants from industrial leftovers, but also with objects from your own family. What materials have you used for this presentation?
For this exhibition, I have mainly used textile remnants from industrial leftovers, although I also work with objects that are closer to home. For the new entrance I designed for the Centraal Museum, for example, I used a great deal of material from my personal archive, including objects from the family archives of my grandmother and mother.
What I have explored in the exhibition at Rademakers is how I can reuse and revise my own work. I previously created a window installation for Hermès, for which I developed all kinds of three dimensional objects. Such an installation is only on display for a few months, after which all the materials returned to me. That made me start thinking: I do not want to throw this textile away afterwards. How can I look at these elements again, almost as if they were blank, and give them a new place and function? This idea of reuse and of giving existing materials a new role is therefore deeply woven into the exhibition.
What interested you in collaborating with Hermès? Your work was presented there at the very heart of the consumer economy on the P.C. Hooftstraat.
In a sense, it is certainly at the heart of consumption, but personally, I see it somewhat differently. Hermès is actually the only commercial client I currently work with, apart from museums and galleries. It is a special client for me because they have an enormous amount of respect for me as an artist. They give me much freedom and genuinely enable me to experiment with new things.
They make products that I could never afford myself, but I do not necessarily see that as a problem. At the same time, those products are made in a beautiful way, in France, in workshops where people are well paid and work under good conditions. So I think that if a new product is going to be made and sold, I am not necessarily opposed to that.
I also have the impression that Hermès gives more thought to the way things are made, particularly when I compare it with other shops on the P.C. Hooftstraat. It seems to be something they are more intrinsically concerned with. For me as an artist, the collaboration is especially valuable because it allows me to broaden my practice and experiment with new ideas.
Simone Post, Bird in Ox-Eye Window, Rademakers GalleryThe birds I previously saw hanging in the window of Hermès have now become part of a painting. Why did you choose to move from a three dimensional work to a work on canvas?
Yes, the birds that you previously saw in the Hermès windows have now become part of a series of paintings. I literally took those works out of the space and turned them into new works. What I found interesting was that I had the freedom at the time to create an entire small world within that space. That was, of course, wonderful. I could make anything I wanted and it became a world in which you could dream.
At the same time, I am interested in exploring to what extent a work on the wall can also influence the experience of an entire space. If you hang a painting with those birds in a room, for example, it changes the way you experience the space around it. It gives you another view outwards. I therefore find it interesting to explore how a work can have that effect on a larger space and how I can continue to use those elements in new ways.
What materials would you still like to work with one day?
I find that difficult to answer. I am having so much fun with my current processes and still see so many possibilities in the textile I work with that, for now, it gives me more than enough to explore. At the same time, new materials can present themselves unexpectedly. The candy I am working with now also seemed to come out of nowhere. So I'm keeping an open mind, but at the moment there is still more than enough for me to discover within textile.
Looking ahead, do you want to continue along this path of creating immersive spaces?
I really enjoy working on large installations in which I can create an entire world, as I recently did for the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and the Venice Biennale. Projects like these do demand a great deal from both me and my team. Afterwards, I found myself longing for smaller works again and for the freedom to experiment within a more clearly defined framework. Those are the works you can now see in the gallery and at Museum Voorlinden. I enjoy that alternation: large immersive projects alongside more intimate works.
©Titia Hahne