In the Inner Garden

IN THE INNER GARDEN

In the Inner Garden was a temporary time- and weather-based sculpture in an inner garden in Amsterdam Oost. The work was on show as a part of the festival Art Oost during three days in October 2020.

In public decoration, it is important that the work will last for a long time; for outdoor works, even more emphasis is placed on weather and wind. In this show, a work was placed outdoors with a lifespan of 3 days. In a courtyard in eastern Amsterdam, I showed two cubic shapes, interconnected, made of cardboard. One symptom of the pandemic that strongly affects me is how the world has shrunk. From flying, taking the train or meeting friends, all of a sudden life changed. The absurd feeling of walking on empty streets and mostly staying at home. But while our body stops, the mind travels on. A wheelchair-bound man lives in the garden where I installed my work. In the autumn of 2020, he kept to himself, first with no other goal than to avoid becoming infected, later with the goal of being vaccinated. His world shrank to his home and his courtyard. Many are the ones who have been hit hard by the pandemic, but some have profited from them. Companies whose services were based on logistics and e-commerce have fared well. They were well prepared for a quarantine culture, where people spent more and more time indoors. Cardboard is a perfect try-out material when making models, it is always easy to get hold of, it grows in heaps, or like weeds in the streets and in people’s homes during the pandemic. During the exhibition, it rained every day, and the sculpture changed. As the rain poured down it changed color, glue inside the paper crept up to the surface, and I lost control of the sculpture’s appearance.