A Conversation with iRAP Students Reynaert Vosveld and Lena Krysiak

FMI Graduation Show 2026 Interview Series

By Olivia Niuman

For this interview, I sat with iRAP students Reynaert Vosveld and Lena Krysiak, who shared some insights into their process and graduation work. Though different in approach, both their projects examine how human relationships shape our understanding of a specific place. 

Reynaert reflected, “I think we both explore the space or a certain space from a very emotional point of view. I think it differs in a sense that with Lena's work, it's very personal. My work is also very personal, but in different ways where I involve a lot of external factors to the thing that I'm researching.” 

Reynaert’s project engages with the symbiotic relationship between the punk scene and the city of Groningen. Reynaert noted that his work isn’t necessarily about punk, but that punk is more of a context to which he brings his work. “These are two worlds that I move in, arts and DIY, and for this I try to merge them as much as I can, while still not using it as an aesthetic or a backdrop, but being involved in a DIY scene and having people contribute in many different ways.” 

Working on this project and being a part of the iRAP program in general has prompted both students to think about their role within the specific contexts they are working in. For Reynaert, in this project, “I really try to take on that more organizational and curating role that I have with bands or booking a festival, but to do it with visual artists or writers.” 

Lena sees her role as a “maker of hints.” She explains: “I engage with stories from other people: from my family, from neighbours, and kind of hint at them. To point out that they are there and we should pay attention, that there is something more than what we see, more than we are told.” Constructing hints is her way of referencing and processing stories and experiences that are quite specific and personal while also evoking a feeling that a viewer can connect to. 

Reynaert saw a similarity between the way Lena described her work and his own thesis. “At some point, I kind of gave up overtly wanting to tell something because I know that people will always either interpret something in a different way, or that everyone has their own baggage and their own context in which they see something, so it will always land differently.” 

Reynaert’s graduation work mainly takes the form of an exhibition he has organized titled Wie zijn de stad? (Who are the city?) on the 28th of May and a punk festival titled Urban Clutter on the 30th of May. He invited other artists, performers, and writers to join him in the exhibition, the punk festival, and a zine with poetic texts. His project moves through these different mediums to bring together different angles and perspectives on who makes up the identity of the city.  

“The context in which you exist matters a lot, and that context doesn't only form you, but you form that context as well, and I take that very figuratively with the city and its inhabitants: they create each other's identity.” At the graduation show at the A-Kerk, Reynaert will show work he has made – paintings, a short film, the poetic publication with twelve contributors – and some physical remnants of the festival. 

The title of Lena’s graduation work is Tangled Timelines. “To go back doesn't mean that you're not going forward, and the forward comes back to the past,” she explained. Lena’s work at the graduation show is also composed of remnants collected from conversations, the archive, and trips to her great-grandparents’ house in Poland. There is a built-in inaccessibility to the work, because she had never been inside the house, and only saw it from the outside. “My work during the exhibition is going to be an installation that gathers those hints. I'm also going to do a performance as well, which will be a bit more improvised and personal.” 

 I wondered what the value was for each of the artists to show remnants of something that already happened, and what they think a visitor might gain from experiencing them. “A big part of my research itself is interacting with the archive and the failure of the archive,” Lena shared. “I'm acknowledging the failure of not being able to tell the stories, so I think the remnants kind of create this aura of failure and acknowledge it.” 

“The frustration is very much a real thing and something that shows in those hints,” she continued. “You can also be frustrated as a viewer: I invite you to be a frustrated viewer, and I invite you to be like I don't get it and then ask me, and we can create new hints together.” 

For Reynaert, showing remnants in the church is a way to answer the difficult proposition of how to exhibit a social practice. For him, the work is both the physical things that exist and the moment where they were all brought together during his exhibition and the punk festival, which will have already happened at the time of the graduation show. His presentation at the A-Kerk references and extends Urban Clutter, bringing it into the present, not wholly dissimilar from Lena’s Tangled Timelines. 

Reynaert and Lena’s work, along with the other three departments at the Frank Mohr Institute, will be on view at the A-Kerk in Groningen from 25-28 June, 2026. For more interviews, information, and details about the students and their graduation work, keep an eye on the event page on our website and follow us on Instagram.