International Residency
Netherlands
Rowan van As, 'Small Talk at the Kruiskade', 2024.
Rowan's residency with NARS is made possible by CBK Rotterdam/Fonds Kwadraat.
Rowan van As creates installations, sculptures, and performances that remix everyday urban life into poetic, surreal gestures, exploring how the individual can propose alternative social moments — small, lived micro-utopias.
Rowan van As (1991, Goes, NL) is a Rotterdam-based visual artist who creates installations, sculptures, and performances, often as social gestures. He studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy (2010–2014) and earned his MFA at St. Lucas, Antwerp (2015–2016).He draws from everyday urban life, remixing found images and objects into layered, surreal works that shift the meaning of the discarded.Food forms an intuitive part of his later practice — as material and connector. From April to June 2026, he will be in residence in New York, developing a project on the city’s oyster history.His most ambitious project to date is a functioning reinterpretation of a classic yellow cab, which he aims to bring to New York.His work explores the relative powerlessness of the individual, seeking a poetic language that is playful, confrontational, and open to dialogue.
