Anni Mertens (1995) is a Luxembourgish artist currently living and working in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She grew up in Luxembourg and pursued her studies later on at the HKU in Utrecht, Netherlands where she graduated in Fine Arts in July 2019. After doing a Premaster in Architecture at ArtEz and working in Utrecht she moved to Gent to deepen her practice by doing a Master of Fine Arts in the Ceramic and Glass department at LUCA School of Arts.

Mertens creates sculptural worlds where ceramic, steel, wood, and found objects collide in playful chaos. With a keen sense of humour and an intuitive approach, she brings together abstraction and disfiguration, precision and spontaneity.

Her installations unfold as surreal theatres of the absurd—spaces where materials stretch, lean, squeeze, and twist in unexpected harmony.

At the heart of her practice is clay—a soft, malleable substance that transforms into hard, stone-like forms. Yet through her hands, fired ceramic appears elastic, mimicking the supple flow of rubber. This contradiction between visual softness and physical solidity is key to Mertens’ work: what looks light is heavy, what seems still is bursting with hidden motion.

Her sculptures often take on exaggerated gestures and curious details that evoke both laughter and contemplation. Pieces may be glazed in bright, vivid colours or left raw to reveal the earthy textures of clay. This sensory contrast—between gloss and grit, fluid and firm—invites viewers to look closer, question their perceptions, and engage with the unexpected.

Inspired by the humour and irony found in everyday life,
her installations challenge what we take for granted.
They invite us into an imaginative space—one where static objects dance, and the familiar becomes delightfully strange.