About Renee

ABOUT RENEE VAN BAVEL

Berlin-based Dutch artist Renee van Bavel explores themes of peace, freedom, democracy, and human connection. Through a multidisciplinary artistic practice, she creates opportunities for people to engage with and experience these themes on a personal level. This is powerfully embodied in her immersive artwork THE MIRROR OF PEACE, in which viewers see themselves reflected at full scale while reading the text: “This is what people living in peace look like.” With installations such as THE MIRROR OF PEACE, she creates striking, sensory spaces that immediately engage visitors with the question of what a life in peace means. The artwork makes tangible the realization that peace cannot be taken for granted and invites us to consciously contribute to preserving it every day.

In 2022, in collaboration with the Draiflessen Collection and Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore- Benedicti Claustra Onlus, van Bavel presented THE MIRROR OF PEACE during the Biennale Arte in Venice. Since 2023, an edition of THE MIRROR OF PEACE has been included in the collection of the Draiflessen Collection and can be experienced in the museum garden of the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen, Germany.  In the summer of 2025, THE MIRROR OF PEACE was presented at the Global Hearth Summit of The Wellbeing Project in the city center of Ljubljana in Slovenia.

From 2022 to 2024, Van Bavel was Artist in Residence at the Memorial Sites Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück, where she developed new artistic approaches to remembrance and collective memory through art projects such as LIFELINE, EVERY WOMAN A MONUMENT, and gedenk.feier.

From 2001 to 2018, she wrote songs for international commemorative events, including commissions for the Parliamentarians’ House in Berlin, the Berlin Wall Foundation, and the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands. She has performed on several occasions for King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, former German President Joachim Gauck, and the current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Renee van Bavel lives and works in Berlin.