Nieuw Jurk is a transdisciplinary artist who throws her artistic, public, and private body into battle to analyse and emphasise injustice and hypocrisy in social and cultural behaviour and structures. In her work, she employs and unravels the implicit codes and language of clothes and textiles, shaping imaginary worlds based on real-life absurdism and magnifying human behaviour fueled by destructive systems. She crashes the hidden rules of outer appearance that shape and control our lives—the dictatorship of modern society that grips us in our fragile urge to belong. Not dodging any confrontation, Jurk shows us there’s a way out.

Nieuw Jurk is the interdisciplinary and socially critical alter ego of Esther Meijer, notorious for its history of conceptual and unique fashion projects, where Meijer practiced fashion in an innovative and multidisciplinary way. A Nieuw Jurk concept was reflected in the choice of disciplines, a collection, print design, presentation, main characters, and collaborations. Meijer observes fashion as a phenomenon with the gaze of an anthropologist and analyses it as a means of communication, forever inspired by youth culture, identity and image, and many subcultures.

Nieuw Jurk processes the fashion trauma of being stuck in the system through making installative and sculptural work of discarded textiles and worn clothes. To expose the fashion industry as one of the most oppressive systems of contemporary society - for workers, consumers, designers, ecosystems, and non-human animals. Recently, she hosted a nomadic art space in Amsterdam Zuidoost where people showed their work, came together, and exchanged ideas - creating space for several subcultures, artists, and non-normative makers, thinkers, and voices.