CHARLIE KOOLHAS BIOGRAPHY

Since graduating with a BA in Sociology from New York University in 1999, Dutch artist Charlie Koolhaas (born in London, U.K., in 1977) has contributed extensively to magazines, books and exhibitions with her writing and photography. Her editorial career includes magazine work in New York after which she spent four years with London-based art, fashion and photography magazine TANK from 2000. In 2004, she developed a new visual language for the picture phone as part of an MA in Interactive Media at Goldsmith University and co-founded Offkey TV, a company selling art for the mobile phone. She is currently founder and editor of UNIT magazine, est. 2005 an international journal that brings globalisation down to a human scale from her headquarters in Guangzhou, China, where her company, Intellectual Harmony Development (I.H.D.), is also based.

In 2007, Charlie worked as co-curator and visual director for the Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, China. Besides her role in the curatorial team, she exhibited two series of photography works.  The first was a specially commissioned project called ‘Green and Grey’, which was a visual investigation into the relationship between nature and urbanisation in the Chinese city, Shenzhen.  The second was part of an on-going photographic project study on London titled ‘Dead London’.  She also created a series of word shadow boxes entitled ‘Lite Words’ in collaboration with Dutch designers Otje Bastiaansen and Emiel van Boekel. The ‘Lite Words’ installation was redesigned with graphic designer Lucy Erikson and exhibited in June 2008 in London for the ‘Off The Wall’ exhibition at the Southbank.

A series of her photographs of the ‘City of the Dead’ in Cairo, Egypt, originally commissioned by Domus magazine in 2004, was first exhibited at the Guangzhou Triennial in 2005, then at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2006, and most recently at the ‘Post-It-City’ exhibition in Barcelona in 2008. In June 2008, Charlie Koolhaas participated in the ‘Dubai Next’ an exhibition for the Vitra Design Museum (that opened concurrently with 2008 edition of Art Basel), commissioned by the Dubai Art and Culture Authority and curated by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Palestinian curator Jack Persekian. Her photographs were a visual exploration of multi-culturalism in Dubai, UAE.

In January-March 2009, her solo photography exhibition at the AedesLand Gallery in Berlin, entitled True Cities, featured over 300 images portraying scenes from four of the world’s largest urban agglomerations: Guangzhou, Dubai, Lagos and London. In May of 2009, Charlie collaborated with artist Angelbert Metoyer on an exhibition of collages called ‘Global Static’, which were exhibited at the Sandler-Hudson gallery in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.  An exhibit of her photographs of ‘Dubai versus Nigeria’ was exhibited at the 2009 Shenzhen Biennale last December, photographs of Dubai were also shown at the Worksetting Gallery, UK and her photographs of China were part of a group show for the TILT Collective Art Fair, London, in July 2010. Her video installation, ‘A World Divided by Colour’ was part of Get it Louder exhibition, in Beijing, and Shanghai between October and December 2010.

In October 2010, Charlie combined forces with her mother and artist, Madelon Vriesendorp, in an exhibition entitled ‘Room for Thought’ at the Lucy Mackintosh Gallery (Lausanne, Switzerland). The exhibition was a series of rooms and sets, within which Madelon’s work and their collaborative pieces could be found, depicting surreal scenes and miniature cities living in primitive alternative universes using toys, cardboard and photography. Charlie exhibited a series of 5 different windows to give the effect of standing in a living room and looking onto the distant ‘real world’.

In January 2011, ‘True Cities; The exhibition preview for the book’, a photographic and text installation and summary of ten years of Charlie Koolhaas’ research on global cities was exhibited at the Architectural Association in London. The book will be published in September 2011.

In March 2011, Charlie exhibited at the Art Dubai art fair with the Lucy Mackintosh Gallery, showcasing a window installation of Dubai and a diptych. In addition, she was commissioned by the art fair for the second time to photograph the event. Following that, the second edition of the ‘Dubai Next’ exhibition, titled ‘Dubai Then’, was opened at the Thirdline Gallery (Gallery 1) in the Downtown Pavilion, Dubai. Her photographs of Dubai were also published in a book called ‘Evolving Spaces: Dubai’s emerging cultural districts’ by Brownbook UAE along with a research text by Ahmad Makia launched at the AIR Gallery in London for the Shubbak Festival there.

In the last 10 years, Charlie Koolhaas’ photography and writing has been featured in a variety of publications, including Domus Magazine (Italy), ArtRreview magazine (UK), Bd magazine (Germany), Mark MARK Magazine (Netherlands), Content magazine (Netherlands/ Taschen), Sexy Machinery Magazine (UK), International Herald Tribune newspaper (UK), Time Out (UK), Sunday Times (UK), Creative Review magazine, Numero magazine (France), Kulture Flash (on line magazine) (online), NIAi  book publishers (Netherlands), City Pictorial Magazine (China)., Newway Magazine (China) and Outlook Magazine (China).