Nathalie Morales is a Dutch artist and cultural thinker living and working in Amsterdam.
She explores how identity is shaped and reshaped in moments of change, loss and transition. Working with fragments — images, memories, experiences, cultural narratives and observations — she investigates how they shape our sense of self and belonging, and what becomes visible when they shift, break apart and come into new relationships.
sensing the in-between
moving through liminal space
what is emerging?
exploring fragments of ourselves
of culture
and bringing them together
About
I am a collector of fragments. Ideas, conversations, cultural phenomena, things I notice on the street, questions that keep coming back to me. I’m interested in what happens when seemingly unrelated pieces are placed next to each other — and we wait for something to emerge. A pattern. An insight. A different way of seeing. Art.
That is probably why I work across collage, writing and cultural inquiry.
I have always been drawn to questions of who we are, where we belong and how we come to see the world the way we do. Having moved between seven countries, across different cultures and through experiences of loss, these questions have become less abstract to me. They are questions I continue to live with.
Increasingly, I am interested in what happens when personal questions open onto something collective: how identity and belonging are shaped by place, culture, memory and the stories we inherit, and what happens when these things begin to change.
My practice sits between philosophy, cultural inquiry, visual art and collective reflection. I work through writing, walking, conversation, observation, intuition and collage, following questions wherever they lead.
Background: Philosophy · Communications · Marketing
Projects
2026 - present | Current research // artistic experiments
2026 - present. | The liminal room
2025 - present | Fragments of Us
2021 - present | The Tears I’ve swallowed
The Tears I’ve Swallowed
on grief, identity and becoming
A philosophical memoir exploring my personal journey through grief, journeying from numbness to the return to feeling.
To be published in 2027/2028 in Dutch and English.
Fragments of Us
beyond age, gender and race
A visual and conceptual exploration of identity, and the categories through which we learn to understand ourselves.
What happens when we look beyond what defines us?
What do we see and experience?
The liminal room
A 6-week online creative experience and community space for anyone moving through a threshold or transition, after loss or an ending.
Liminal space asks something of us: to suspend, to slow down, to turn inward.
We are in a dark cocoon. In the unknown. No sight and no hearing, just sensing.
So how do we find our way in this dark and vast space? How do we listen to our senses? How do we find and create meaning? How do we anchor and contain ourselves? How do we move through this rite of passage?
week 1: opening room (3 hour collective zoom ritual)
week 2: grief & liminality
week 3: the unknown
middle room (90 minute collective zoom)
week 4: identity & intuition
week 5: death & emergence
week 6: closing room (3 hour collective zoom ritual)
mediums: collage, philosophy, writing and ritual.
this isn’t a conventional online program. it is a creative and communal space for reflection. a room to arrive, land, be and express. a temporary space to spend time with what is ending, what is unknown, and what might be emerging. the liminal room grows out of six years of my own experience, writing and inquiry into liminal spaces.
Questions
& experiments
I am constantly drawn to questions. Some arrive through research or conversation; others begin as a feeling, image, tension or intuition I can't quite articulate yet. I follow these threads until they become questions I can explore through writing, conversation, research, observation and visual experimentation.
I am especially interested in what happens in the spaces between what was and what comes next: when an identity no longer fits, when something we once relied on is lost, when a place stops feeling like home, or when a familiar way of seeing begins to shift.
These thresholds can be deeply personal, but they can also be collective. They raise questions about how we reconstruct meaning, identity and belonging when the structures that once gave us a sense of who we are begin to change.
Current areas of inquiry:
Identity & authenticity
Grief, loss & transition
Place & belonging
Culture & perception
Questions I’m following:
How do we construct a sense of self and belonging in a world where the structures that once gave us those things are increasingly fluid, fragmented and mediated? What happens when those structures shift?
What remains when the familiar falls away?
How do we inhabit liminality?
If the self is made from fragments that are constantly changing, what could it mean to be “authentic”?
How do places become part of who we are and how do we construct ideas of home?
How do images, stories, cultural narratives and ways of seeing shape what we notice, value and understand — and what might become visible when we look differently?
A way of working
My process moves between sensing and questioning, between what is felt and what can be articulated. I tend to begin with something that catches my attention and follow the thread, collecting fragments and allowing connections to emerge.
SENSING
What speaks to me?
What feels significant, strange, unresolved or alive?
↓
QUESTIONING
What might be underneath this?
↓
COLLECTING
I gather what catches my attention — images, ideas, conversations, observations, questions.
↓
CONNECTING
What patterns, tensions or unexpected relationships emerge?
↓
EXPRESSING
I bring the fragments together through collage, writing, visual experiments and other forms of expression.
Intrigued? Let’s have a chat!
I’m open to conversations, collaborations and creative forms of inquiry.
Contact