Yasmine Akondo
I am a visual artist based in Antwerp, Belgium, born in a small village in the Kempen, in 2000. My work is driven by conceptual questions about existence and ways of living. It investigates how cultural history and scientific concepts shape our understanding of existence, often referencing actions, objects and stories that have similarities across cultures – such as the rosary, circumambulation and Genesis stories.
Through the bodies of sculptures and installations, I create scenes where stories can unfold. These spaces and objects carry the desire to be activated, often through ritualistic practices. This results in interactions through which the work can grow while it exists in a given space and moment.
In my creative process, I am fascinated by 'point zero' – an unknown and undefined space, a void where everything remains yet to be shaped, and thus possible, existing between presence and absence. This concept allows me to investigate different ways of existing, shaping my conceptual approach to art.
Holding Space Through Empty Form: An Inquiry Into Origins and Ways of Being
In the spring wind
the petals fall
yet the temple bell
continues
to carry their silence.
– Eihei Dōgen
Not-Knowing as a Beginning
The only thing I know is that I don’t know. I’m searching for a way of being in this world, in this life. A way that reaches deeper than organised, material or popularised life can offer.
Originally, my research started as an exploration of interactive, origin-rooted rituals, searching for a way to reshape my artistic practice existing out of the building of sculptures, installations and performances. But as I went along, I abandoned that course. I felt the urge to go deeper, to zoom in. That’s when I turned to Zen – not as a religion or aesthetic, but as a practice. A way of being.
I started noticing how certain Zen characteristics, like emptiness, naturalness and asymmetry, not only shaped the way I presented my work, but also how I thought, saw and moved through the world.
Origins and Emptiness
But something was missing. A grounding element I couldn’t name.
I returned to where it all begins: my fascination for existence. Or rather, origin. What does it mean for something to come into being? And how does it pass away again? I became fascinated by the number zero, a void that could hold everything and nothing.
I explored creation myths: chaos giving birth to form, darkness making space for light, molecules swirling into life. These stories, ancient and scientific alike, don’t just explain beginnings, they shape how we live. They give structure, purpose, meaning.
In ancient Egypt, for example, Nun, the lifeless waters, gave rise to Benben, a pyramid-shaped mound from which Ra, the sun god, emerged. Everything in life was built in relation to this beginning. Gods weren’t distant figures, they shaped architecture, rituals, even daily tasks. And so every society had shaped its own beginnings.
Now look at modern times. Science stepped in with its own genesis story, not of gods, but of gases, particles, collisions. We replaced meaning with explanation. Yet every beginning still births a worldview. Each origin shapes how we live.
Zen as a Living Practice
Meanwhile, my inquiry into Zen deepened. What I enjoyed about Buddhism was its refusal to cling to belief systems. Zen evolves, through texts, teachers and practices, in an ongoing response to the question of how to be.
This research unfolded by writing an inquiry through encounters, designing spaces, experimenting with spatial composition and noticing what happened when I left things unfinished, while embracing mistakes or invited spontaneity.
Zen is not a belief. It is a way. Its principles, or characteristics; emptiness, simplicity, naturalness, quietude, are not just aesthetic but experiential. Zen became a practice of attention, of presence, of repetition and encounter.
Emptiness as Space for Meaning
At the heart of this research is emptiness. Not as absence, but as a field of potential. Emptiness is not hollow. It holds. It allows. It becomes a kind of architecture for being.
This idea led me to the project proposal No-Mind: Holding Space Through Emptiness, a subtle scenography in nature. Low walls, open corners, soft materials. A meditative memorial space. A beginning and an ending at once.
Emptiness started to change how I move. How I think. How I create. I began to wonder: o How does a body move differently in a space built around emptiness? o What happens when space isn’t claimed, but held? o Can emptiness be felt not as lack, but as presence? o What kind of meaning arises when nothing is imposed? o …
Zingeving: The Missing Thread
Eventually, I understood what the missing thread was. It was zingeving.
In the Dutch tradition, zingeving – often translated as ‘meaning-making’ – refers to the act of giving or discovering meaning in response to life’s deeper questions. It’s not a fixed answer, but a process. A movement. A way.
In Zen, meaning isn’t something to be constructed or held onto. It arises, like a breath, from being-with: with space, with silence, with materials, with others, with oneself.
This is where zingeving and Zen meet. Not as systems of belief, but as forms of attention. My practice became a way of making meaning not by defining, but by holding space for it to emerge.
A gesture is made, not explained. A space is held, not filled. This is the form my zingeving takes. Soft, open, continuous. Or at least, that’s what I hope it becomes.
Returning with Blue Skies
I feel like I’m at the beginning again, or perhaps at the beginning for the very first time. I’ve touched something that feels close to the core of my practice, something I can carry and nurture over time. Not fixed, but held through ongoing attention. This research has become a landscape: a place I can walk through, rest in and return to. A terrain that offers orientation, even as everything around me continues to shift.
It feels like zingeving has closed the circle. It turned out to be a keystone – not only in my research, but also in my personal life. In acknowledging my own struggles with meaning-making, I found a framework that both grounds me and opens new pathways. Two directions, in particular, are calling:
The first continues the movement of this year’s research. Much of the work took place in intimate contexts, through small-scale, sensory encounters. Now, I feel ready to begin building. To give form to what I’ve gathered. I envision new spatial works and physical projects emerging in the years ahead, grounded in what has already begun.
The second path leads toward a new research project: I’ll Bring You Blue Skies. The sky becomes a soundboard and metaphor for things ungraspable. How can emptiness hold form? This inquiry expands the notion of zingeving, bridging my artistic practice with the wider field of meaning-making, particularly in relation to young people and those in existential contemplation, maybe in psychiatric care. For now these are just first and fleeting thoughts. I don’t yet know how this project will unfold, but I hope it will become a shared space – one where dreams, longings and questions about life can be held and explored together.