Matthijs Bruijne will address the question of the current relation of institutions and individuals by considering the institutional form of the ‘union’ and from his own position as an artist who works beyond ‘autonomy’.
Matthijs de Bruijne's practice is often a result of political involvement, and arise in the last years in collaboration with trade unions and other labor organizations.
December 2001 and his first working period in Argentina can be seen as a major and radical turning point in his working method. Working in the middle of the social reality of a bankrupt state and social conflicts, he saw that the position of the artist can be more than being just a reflecting outsider, that it could well be a dynamic form to actively work within political struggles.
In 2005 also because of the fact that working abroad is characterized by come and go, above all to be able to come and go, de Bruijne shifted his focus working on several projects about the rise of the right wing populism in the Netherlands. During these projects the issue of labour related with migration got more and more to the fore.
As a logical step he got in 2010 invited by the Dutch Union of Cleaners to work as an artist helping this worker's organization visualizing their messages in a clear manner and creating an identity of this part of the working class in the Netherlands.