Nathalie Morales is a Dutch artist and cultural thinker living and working in Amsterdam.
She investigates how identities are constructed and continuously reconfigured through images, culture, place, technology and inherited narratives. Through collage, intuition, writing and philosophical inquiry, she explores what happens when these structures are disrupted, fragmented and recombined.
sensing emerging movements
following what lies beneathand giving it shape
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 you put those seemingly unrelated pieces next to each other - and wait for something to emerge. A pattern. An insight. 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, but my life experiences have led me to move beyond questioning. I have moved between seven countries, traveled extensively across cultures, and have encountered diverse forms of loss.
As a result, identity, belonging and grief feel less like abstract ideas and more like questions and experiences I continue to live with. More recently, I have become interested in moving beyond my personal research and inquiry to that of the collective: investigating questions of identity and belonging in contexts of place and culture, and what happens in the space between the personal and the collective.
My practice sits between philosophy, cultural inquiry and visual art. I work through writing, conversation, observation, intuition and collage, following questions wherever they lead.
Academic background: Philosophy · Communications · Marketing
Projects
2026 - present | Current research // artistic experiments
2026 - 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 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?
Questions
& experiments
I am constantly driven by 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 investigate — through writing, conversation, research, observation and visual experimentation.
Current areas of inquiry:
Identity & authenticity
Individual & collective grief
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?
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 personal and collective identities intersect with place?
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.
Emerging practice
My practice is increasingly moving beyond the individual towards questions that emerge between people, places and cultures. I am interested in using conversation, observation, research, writing and visual experimentation to follow these questions and bring different perspectives into relation.
I am currently exploring what this can become through artistic and cultural inquiry, collaborative projects and conversations around questions of identity, grief, belonging, place and perception — working with artists, creative practitioners and cultural organizations to explore what is emerging, what feels unresolved, and what might become visible when different fragments are brought together.
This is still an evolving part of my practice. Rather than beginning with a fixed methodology, I am interested in allowing the question, the people involved and the material itself to shape the form the inquiry takes.
Have a question, emerging idea or cultural tension that you’d like to explore?
I’m open to conversations, collaborations and creative forms of inquiry.
Contact