Christien Meindertsma makes Top Ten List

Awards

Meindertsma's success continues as a leading Dutch newspaper lists her in the top ten of talented people to watch across all industries. Her work, according to the newspaper, possesses all the qualities that this new decade demands. Humility as well as an environmental consciousness.

By Gabrielle Kennedy /asdf 07-01-2010

Last month the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad published a list of the top ten young people destined to make a splash this decade.

Making the list were politician Roy Kramer, procreation biologist Sjoerd Repping, mathematician Marc Stevens, Dutch/Turkish singer Karsu Dönmez and designer Christien Meindertsma.

Meindertsma made a big name for herself in 2008 with “PIG 05049,” a joint project with Swiss graphic designer Julie Joliat. The project is a book containing 187 pictures of products containing pig, like beer, car-brakes, chewing gum and bullets. It won Meindertsma the Golden Eye Award during Dutch Design Week. That and other projects like her work with flax and the book “Checked Baggage” was described as work that fits with the “eco-trend” movement.

"Designers can think about solutions for the storage of excess CO2, or whether to produce something out of plastic or metal," says Meindertsma. "The time is finished when star designers can just send their products into the world. We have to ask ourselves ‘Is there room for this?’”

Meindertsma’s graduation project at the Design Academy Eindhoven was a collection of jumpers made of wool from just one sheep. The result was a series of jumpers in different sizes.

 NRC Handelsblad also mentions Meindertsma’s business savvy. The photobook “Checked Baggage” was financed with a loan of 10,000 euros, which she used to buy items like knives and wine bottle openers confiscated at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam over one week. She photographed the items and printed a limited edition book of one thousand copies. Each copy was sold with one of the confiscated items within the book, which are now deemed collectors’ items. Christie’s recently sold one for 1800 pounds.    "I continuously ask myself where the things around us come from,” she says. “Then you can estimate what things cost and what they give us."

It is also mentioned in the article that Meindertsma does not subscribe to buzzwords or trend movements like the aforementioned “eco-trend”. She calls it all superficial nonsense.  