Corine Vermeulen’s photographic work addresses notions of identity, belonging, memory and loss through a range of forms and processes navigating between representation and abstraction. Best known for her long-term, immersive projects portraying resilient urban communities in the midst of reinvention, her recent work employs the language of abstract painting, conveying pointed social and political meaning. Born in the Netherlands, Vermeulen has based her studio practice in Detroit since 2006. This relocation has long propelled her interest in themes of home and exile, highlighting paradoxes inherent to the notion of inclusion.

Her photographs have been featured in The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Time Magazine, The Guardian, and The Fader, among other publications. She has exhibited at numerous national and international venues, including a solo exhibition at The Detroit Institute of Arts (2015), and group exhibitions at MOCA Cleveland (2017) and Pier 24 in San Francisco (2018). She has self-published two photo books, Obscura Primavera (2014) and Your Town Tomorrow (2019), which catalogue her documentary work highlighting cross-sectional communities while living in Medellín, Colombia and Detroit, Michigan, respectively.

She earned a BFA cum laude from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, an MFA in photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, was awarded a 2009 Kresge Artist Fellowship and a 2018 McAndless Distinguished Professor in the Humanities Fellowship at Eastern Michigan University. Currently a lecturer at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Vermeulen is a former mentor in The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Immigrant Artist Program.



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