Soft, muted colours dominate Sleeuwits’ photograph ‘Interior no. 47’. Fluorescent light fittings, crepe tape, floorboards, foam rubber, coloured paper? You’re not quite sure what you’re looking at, yet you recognise things. Sleeuwits creates new spaces. To do so, she uses materials taken from those very spaces. She herself says of these spaces: “Interiors you encounter everywhere and nowhere, the blind spots in office buildings, airport waiting areas or the empty corridors of hotels. They are always spaces lacking any connection to the outside world”. Sleeuwits transforms these spaces into new, unrecognisable places. You don’t know what you’re looking at, but you see the crepe tape and the cracks in the ceiling – or is it the floor? In this photograph, too, she leaves you in the dark. You don’t know where you are; Sleeuwits has thrown everything into disarray. The soft, sweet colours do little to reassure you.
Marleen Sleeuwits (Enschede, 1980) works in Rijswijk.
