Art for Government Property 2003

RIJ de Doggershoek Den Helder

De Doggershoek is young offenders’ institute housing up to 120 boys and girls. An elliptical wall behind which lie 12 residential units enclose it, each grouped around a small-shared courtyard. The bedroom windows facing the courtyard are small on the inside wall but open out to larger squares on the external, thus creating shallow niches to accommodate a form of window display. Twelve young artists were commissioned to produce works of art for these niches. As a result, each courtyard has become an external gallery with ten window display niches each. There is a similar niche in the eleventh window, which is next to the entrance to the units and is situated on the corridort hat is used as an inner walkway for the complex. All the works of art refer either to the location itself or to the group of young offenders who are being accommodated there.

Liesbeth van Ginneken decided to interpret the window display niches as a form of extra windows sill full of trinkets for young girls. By applying a transparent photograph of rooms onto the glass, she has managed to optically enlarge the display niches. The trinkets are made in opaque foil and cast a shadow against the background. In choosing which objects to depict, Van Ginneken allowed herself to be led by themes such as lost innocence and loneliness. She deliberately kept the display practical and downbeat so that the girls could place an appropriate object of their own on their real bedroom windowsill. This seems to work in practice: for a while, there was a picture of a cannabis leaf on one of the bedroom sills, in front of a display niche containing a still life of a stuffed toy.