June Querido

On my walks through the Jordaan, the neighbourhood I grew up in, I’ve become accustomed to the views into my neighbours’ homes. Their uncovered windows tell me all kinds of things. The Dutch tend to keep their blinds open, displaying their interiors as set-like backdrops. The window provides a frame through which the residents play-act their everyday lives. Windows act as transparent borders between the public and the private, as thresholds that can be controlled. Undressed and bare, this border is fragile, a living room unfolding from the window into the street. This installation captures this view, as though a room had been carved out by its own shadow and its window held by beams of light.

 

As more windows are being veiled by curtains and privacy film, I think about neighbourhoods in transition. Whenever I return to Jordaan, l check up on the people that surrounded me when I grew up there. Instead of an unobstructed pane to look through, I now squint through the narrow gap between the drapes.