Welcome to the official website of Janica Draisma
Janica Draisma is a multidisciplinary artist, screenwriter, director, photographer and performer. She is currently based in Amsterdam where she has her studio and also runs her production company Draft Foundation.
Janica was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and grew up in Lusaka, Zambia, after which she moved to the Netherlands. She studied visual arts, painting, filmmaking and scriptwriting, as well as acting, mime, various movement techniques and classical singing, thus mastering a broad area in the field of arts, which she comprises in her work, be it film, photography, multimedia or opera. Her work is highly international, reflecting exposure to and interest in different cultures.
Apart from Amsterdam, Janica lived and worked in Paris, London, Rome, Lisbon and Tokyo among others.
Her main interest is communication between people. How do we express our identity, what strategies do we develop in order to survive, how do we change or transform, how do we interact with each other and with the world, are issues Janica deals with in her work. In the end it is all about communication and dialogue.
Possessing the rare quality to unveil her subjects and making an inner world or personal universe visible, her work moves audiences and stimulates the spectator to view things in a different or new way.
Read the showcase article of Antikraak.nl about Janica’s studio.
Janica Draisma is one of our temporary users. She was born in Zimbabwe and later moved to the Netherlands. As an artist, she has a studio in one of the buildings we manage.
We get to take a look at her space and take the opportunity to ask some questions…..
read on
‘SUNNY DAY JAY’ (1.22m x 1.22m, acrylics on panel), painting of our band ‘Sunny Day Jay’, in which I am the lead singer. www.sunnydayjay.com
The artwork will serve as the cover of our first LP, which is in the making! Created during THE COLORFIELD PERFORMANCE, an initiative of Dirk Hakze, in which nearly 500 artists from all over the world make a painting in one day and create a huge colorfield. The venue with all the 500 paintings can be visited daily until the 1st of October 2023. www.thecolorfieldperformance.nl
The ‘SUNNY DAY JAY’ painting is for sale. For the price and purchase details please contact Dirk Hakze or contact me 😉
Amsterdam, May 2022.
Draft Foundation is proud to announce the online world première of our new video, made together with the American soprano Claron McFadden and a creative team.
8’46 – and you touch the world, a video by Janica Draisma & Claron McFadden
8 minutes and 46 seconds is a requiem to George Perry Floyd Jr., the African-American man who was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25, 2020. This moment is cast in a new musical art-video work of 17’ min. During Covid-19 the murder of George Floyd had an immense impact on the world. Janica Draisma asked soprano Claron McFadden to cooperate in an instant composition for her video work. read on and watch
An exclusive selection of my short films is now available online on the EYE FILM PLAYER
The program is part of a series on Avant-Garde films in the Netherlands.
The revenues I receive from EYE will be donated to Ukraine via ‘Save the Children‘ So please spread the news and view the films.
CONSTELLATIONS – work in progress
Portrait of the successful designers duo Lieselot Elzinga and Miro Hämäläinen. (Analogue, 6×6 negative, color). This portrait is part of the series Constellations.
Secret Room documentary written & directed by Janica Draisma
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts… (Shakespeare As you like it)
–Go to documentary
The Secret Room – Nominated
Dutch Film Festival 2020
On the edge of documentary and fiction, The Secret Room takes us on a journey into the universe of Odin Teatret, a unique theatre company founded in 1964 by the famous Italian director Eugenio Barba (1936) and based in an old farm in Holstebro, Denmark. How did this family-like group of people survive over fifty years, up to the present day, despite its members aging and dying?
What is the role of theatre in society? What is the difference between theatre and reality? When are we playing a role, when are we ourselves? How do we deal with the passage of time, the ephemerality of life?
And how do we deal with death?
