Ruchama Noorda is an artist who uses diverse media and materials in performances and installations. In 2002 Noorda graduated at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and she completed her MFA at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2004. She received a PhD degree from University of Leiden where she researched the early 20th century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement.
In her practice Noorda recycles elements of Reform pedagogy, arts, crafts, dance, diet and ritual practices in performance and installation works that both engage and challenge contemporary communitarian and counter-cultural aspirations, practices and beliefs. By highlighting the mystical and magical elements within the Reform tradition along with other undigested and ‘irrational’ material her works perform a séance-function- excavating, the repressed and buried histories within the Modern in ways that set out to complicate hard and fast distinctions between progressive and conservative social and artistic movements.
Solo shows and performances have been hosted by Galeria Municipal do Porto (2019) Paradiso (2018), De Appel (2016), De Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2015), Galerie van Gelder, Amsterdam (2015), High Desert Test Sites, Wonder Valley (2014), Marres, Maastricht (2013), Stadhausgalerie/Kunsthalle Münster (2013), Kunstvereniging Diepenheim (2012) Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden (2007) en Museum Het Domein, Sittard (2003).
