Today’s A Portfolio features the textile works and drawings of Bogota-born, Amsterdam-based Raquel van Haver.
Born in 1989 in Bogota, Colombia, Raquel van Haver now lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Van Haver graduated from the HKU University of the Arts in Utrecht, in 2012. More recently she has spent long periods abroad, gathering source material in both West Africa and South America but continues to return to her own diverse community in the South-East of Amsterdam.
​Solo exhibitions include ‘Spirits of the Soil’ at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, November 2018 – April 2019. Van Haver’s work has also been exhibited at the Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands; Lagos photo festival, Nigeria and BOZAR Centre for Fine Art, Brussels, Belgium.
​Winning the prestigious Dutch Royal Prize for Painting in 2018, Van Haver has gone on to win the Amsterdam award in 2019, both prestigious accomplishments in the Netherlands.
In 2020 she presented her new project ‘Amo a la Reina’ – a solo presentation within the group show ‘Say It Loud’ at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht. She also exhibited works from the series at Breda Photo in Breda and in Museo Bolivariano in Colombia. A documentary made by Bibi Fadlalla was broadcasted on Dutch television in 2020, called ‘The Women of My Country’.
​’Amo a la Reina’ is an extensive research into van Haver’s own heritage and the status of female social leaders in the Colombian regions, forming an in-depth investigation of womanhood more broadly. In her penchant for communication van Havers commented ‘connecting with people in daily life is really important. Something so small can move mountains.
