Monique Besten (The Netherlands, 1972) is a nomadic artist, writer, historian and educator who was born in the Netherlands and is at home where her feet are. She likes to be in the here and now by creating poetic bridges between the past and the future, the real and the virtual world, analogue and digital ways of working. She works site-specific using different media, often building large scale installations inspired by specific places, their history and customs, as well as their human and none-human inhabitants. She researches walking as an artistic medium by making (long distance) performative walks, crossing countries on foot in a three-piece business suit (A Soft Armour), collecting stories and researching life. Themes in her work are slowness, ecology and attentiveness. She studied medieval history in the Netherlands and Ireland, Free Media at the Rietveld Art Academy in the Netherlands and Art in Public Space and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University in Germany.
Her work has been exhibited around the world and the last 5 years she has been teaching Performance Art and Artistic Survival Skills at the HKU University of the Arts in the Netherlands. She writes for & collaborates with the Dark Mountain Project and published the book “The Wanderer. A Traveller born out of Words” (Dpr Barcelona). Her performative walks brought her from Amsterdam to the South of France, she walked from Amsterdam to Vienna, from Barcelona to the COP 21 in Paris and both virtually and in real through Catalunya. Political, social and ecological matters are always at the heart of her performative walks and site specific installations. She gives workshops and lectures about slow ways of being and she has a keen interest in Natural Farming and the philosophies of Masanobu Fukuoka. She is the winner of the Marsato Award 2023 for exceptional walking project.

Full cv: cv monique besten 2025