04 may 2026, Flor Linckens
Last chance: the elusive bodies of Lieve Hakkers
Until 16 May, tegenboschvanvreden in Amsterdam presents the solo exhibition ‘Third Opinion’ by Lieve Hakkers. In this exhibition, the artist offers a series of paintings that feature recognisable elements such as bodies, faces, frogs, brushes and oven mitts. At the same time, the artist deliberately plays with their legibility.
The body plays a significant role in Hakkers’ practice, yet it is rarely a clearly defined whole. Her enigmatic figures are anything but fixed: at times they dissolve into their surroundings or seem to transform on the spot. Some paintings show human-like beings, with fragmented bodies or missing limbs, while in others her ambiguous characters resemble animals or monsters. Figurative motifs, carrying certain connotations, are interspersed with abstract fields of colour and repeating patterns.
As you look, you try to make sense of the scenes and begin to reflect on your own relationship to the body and the ideas that shape it. The paintings touch on broader social and cultural notions of embodiment, autonomy, fluidity and expression, as well as the question of whether the body can even be fixed within such frameworks at all. At the same time, the political charge of the body comes into play, as something that is observed, shaped and interpreted ('the gaze'). These themes intrigue the artist, and her paintings seem to capture the complexity and the contradictions embedded in them.
Hakkers actively embraces the viewer’s personal interpretations. Writing about her work "A Niche Within a Niche Within a Niche" (2026) on Instagram, she noted that her favourite responses described the green lights as resembling migraine symptoms and the figure’s hands as banana peels. The titles of her works often carry enigmatic, slightly opaque names such as "Character Assassination" and "Support Mittens".
In her paintings, the artist works with (egg) tempera, acrylic paint, charcoal, ink, oil paint and oil sticks, and her practice is marked by experimentation. She often makes her own paint in order to carefully compose her palette, paying close attention to the balance between viscosity, opacity, plasticity and fat content. Hakkers mixes her pigments, adds a medium and paints with loose brushstrokes in thin layers. Earlier stages and the working process as a whole often remain visible. In these recent works, she primarily uses dark, twilight tones such as blues, greens, browns and black, punctuated by light accents in almost neon-like colours.
For her imagery, Hakkers draws on a range of sources, including literature, (art) history and online visual culture, combined with personal memories and emotions.
Lieve Hakkers was born in Oldenzaal in 1996 and currently lives and works in Amsterdam. She studied at AKI ArtEZ in Enschede and subsequently spent two years as a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. In 2025, she received the Royal Award for Modern Painting. Her work has previously been shown at the Royal Palace Amsterdam, W139, the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Netherlands Cancer Institute and the Van Gogh Museum as part of the Vincent op Vrijdag programming.
