Sophie Krier (1976, Belgium) is an artist and researcher. Through her work, she enters into dialogue with the history, stories, and living beings connected to a specific place. Descending from tailors and teachers with a farming background based in Luxemburg and Belgium, her practice alternates between long periods of fieldwork with local communities, and editorial work.
“My work is about mending relationships between beings and places. As an artist and researcher, I interweave histories, imaginaries, and embodied experiences – as an educator and editor I share and publish these processes.”
Part of Sophie’s practice is shaped around ‘outdoor schools’, where she engages with communities in speculative learning programs about the relationship between humans and nature. What these programs have in common is their exploration of different forms of presence, through accessible exercises that allow participants to practice paying attention to, and attuning to, a particular ancestral gesture, such as weaving, sowing, kneading, dreaming, remembering, erecting, and moving a fence; among others.
Alternative spaces of learning conceived by Krier over the years include: Field Essays, a series of books and conversations initiated in 2008 envisioned as listening pauses between practitioners and thinkers across disciplines; School of Verticality (2018-ongoing), a program focussing on ‘acupuncture of place’ developed in the context of a research residency hosted by Lungomare, South Tyrol; a series of site-specific outdoor classrooms for soil-based learning (Hunnie Field Classroom, 2012-2013 and Metamorfose Lokaal, 2017, with Henriëtte Waal; the summer school How to Think Like a Mountain, 2016; Garden of Moving Times, 2024, with Daniela Brasil); and the podcast series and exhibition In Search of the Pluriverse (2020-ongoing) commissioned by the Travelling Academy of Nieuwe Instituut and co-curated with Erik Wong.
She has developed and led two curricula: Designlab at Rietveld Academy (2005-2009) and Art & Design Practice track at the Liberal Arts & Sciences University College Roosevelt (2017-2022). Between 2017 and 2023 she was a fellow researcher at Plateforme Art, design et société at EnsadLab, the research laboratory of École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
Over the last four years Krier trained in Equine Facilitated Learning. She currently runs her coaching practice Learning with Horses alongside her artistic practice.
