Quirijn Menken

Visual Artist and Independent Artistic Researcher

How we perceive images and in what way images are framed or mediate our beliefs, has become of ever greater importance. Especially in art education, a critical awareness and approach of images as part of visual culture is of utmost importance. The Bilderatlas operates as a mediation, and offers new ways of seeing and knowing. It is mainly known through the ground-breaking work of the cultural theorist Aby Warburg, who intended to present an art history without words. His Mnemosyne Bilderatlas shows how the arrangement of images - and the interstices between them, offers new perspectives and ways of seeing. The Atlas as a medium to critically address Visual Culture is also practiced by the German artist Gerhard Richter, and it is in written form used in the Passagen Werk of Walter Benjamin.


As an independent Artistic Researcher, Quirijn Menken developed a tool to develop criticality towards visual culture. In order to examine the use of the Bilderatlas as a tool in art education, several experiments with art students were conducted. These experiments led to an exploration of different pedagogies, especially

Critical Pedagogy - offering new perspectives and trajectories of learning.
The concept of criticality is developed by Irit Rogoff (professor of Visual Culture, University of London) and connects perfectly with the Bilderatlas as a medium to offer new ways of seeing and looking at what is produced in our visual culture. Using the Bilderatlas as a tool to develop criticality towards

Visual Culture, I also developed and tested a new pedagogy; a Pedagogy of Difference and Repetition, based on the concepts of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The outcome offers the basis for my continuing PhD research, with Artistic Research (experiments, interventions) at its core.

The dissertation is to be found at the following address (free download): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 331224832_Constellating_Images_Bilderatlases_as_tool_to_develop_criticality_towards_visual_culture


This platform offers a glimpse into the work and research of Quirijn Menken: an artist whose projects bridge the gap between visual arts and critical pedagogy. Through experimental approaches inspired by thinkers like Aby Warburg and Irit Rogoff, Quirijn explores how visual culture influences collective memory and critical thinking.

Visitors are invited to engage with a body of work that seeks not only to present images, but to question them. The site features a selection of original artworks, prints available for purchase, and publications related to his ongoing PhD research on the role of the Bilderatlas in developing new forms of critical visual literacy.