Dieneke Jansen is an artist, lecturer and social activist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Working with documentary and social practices, Jansen's work engages with tensions between site-responsive interventions, performative actions, and lens-based practices. For many years, her practice has focused on the social justice of housing, and she works with various housing communities to productively challenge inequality.
Through making-events, exhibitions and publishing projects, Jansen develops strategies that build and expand upon the relationships between modes of dwelling and institutional art frameworks, in turn shifting the conversation from precarious to precious as gentle and sustainable political acts.
Her extended engagement with the Tamaki Housing Group—a Glen Innes community organisation protesting the forced eviction of existing State Housing residents to make way for multi-use developments—has resulted in the exhibitions Areas A & B, Te Tuhi Offsite (2015); and 90 DAYS +, Te Tuhi (2018).
More recently, her practice has shifted focus to work with inner-city public housing tenants in Tāmaki Makaurau, with projects such as You’re Welcome, RM Gallery; Shadow’s Studio: Chatting with Scones; Artspace Aotearoa; and Backdoor-Doorbell Studio, Artspace Aotearoa (all 2022).