Keeley Haftner (b. 1985) is a Saskatchewanian-Canadian artist based in the Netherlands whose multidisciplinary practice centers waste as both material and metaphor. Through intimate acts of transformation, her work challenges extractive systems and prompts new ways of thinking about social and ecological relations. She was born and raised on Treaty 6 territory, on the traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Métis nations, to whom she and her ancestors are deeply indebted. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the USA, Canada, and Europe, including at Schering Stiftung Berlin (DE), the Art Institute of Chicago (USA), and the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof (NL). Haftner received her BFA from Mount Allison University (2011) and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). 

She has received numerous awards and honours, including a longlisting for Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award and a shortlist nomination for the Netherlands’ biennial De Kei Prize. Selected residencies include the European Ceramic Workcentre (NL), Vermont Studio Center (USA), Living in the Play: NIDO II (IT) by the Poor Farm (USA), and SÍM (IS). She has presented and created work for Transmediale (Berlin), Open Engagement (Queen’s Museum, NYC), Chicago’s Architecture and Terrain Biennials, and This Art Fair (Amsterdam). Selected publications include The 3D Additivist Cookbook and BAKSTEEN | BRICK (Kunsthal KAdE). Her work is held in numerous institutional and private collections, including the Ceramic Museum of the Netherlands and The Over Holland Collection. Haftner is a two-time recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Research and Creation Grant and is currently a Professional Artist with Stroom (NL).

Headshot: Jon Burung

Image: (Sculpture): Carbon Copies (Frances Whitehead) 15, from series: “Sculptures from Other Sculptors’ Sculptures”, 2021, 37 x 37 x 38cm, Unwanted ceramic sculpture by artist Frances Whitehead (recycled), waste clay, one hour's worth of CO₂ from artist Keeley Haftner, gas cap (Drawing): Carbon Copies (Frances Whitehead) 18, from series: “Sculptures from Other Sculptors’ Sculptures”, 2022, 150 x 150cm, Ink, coloured pencil, acrylic, gold/silver leaf. Photo Credit: Ruben van Vliet

Description: “Carbon Copies (Frances Whitehead)” is part of a larger series titled “Sculpture from Other Sculptors' Sculptures,” an expanding group of works in which unwanted sculptures from other artists are transformed. In 2002, Chicago-based artist Frances Whitehead completed a residency at the European Ceramic Workcentre in which she glazed two toilet sets to symbolically measure the water level of the New Amsterdam Peil (NAP). After donating these unwanted sculptures to Keeley Haftner in 2016, Haftner moved from Chicago to the Netherlands two years later, bringing them full circle. This serendipitous 40,075 km journey prompted Haftner to do the same residency nearly twenty years later, where she transformed Frances' sculpture into vessels that hold human breath as a form of symbolic and literal CO2 offset. As a performance, Haftner exhales into each sculpture, the specific scale of which is commensurate to the carbon dioxide content of human breath as it relates to time. 

(updated 2025)