Ronit Eden. Concept & Spatial Design offers curatorship and exhibition design

© Ronit Eden. concept & spatial design

Design: Cubicle Design

Empty Playground

Etty Hillesum center, Deventer, Netherlands, 2023

A site specific installation of Amos van Gelder, curatorship and exhibition design 

  • Installing the exhibition
  • Installing the exhibition
  • Amos van Gelder, The twenty from Deventer, acrylic, oil and charcoal on paper mounted on board, 240 x 200 cm., 2019
  • Unknown photographer, Etty Hillesum centrum archive, Deventer, 1942
  • Detail
  • Detail from the site specific installation
  • Detail from the site specific installation
  • Detail from the site specific installation

The Empty Playground project consists of visual materials and sound work. The painting of the twenty-two children will be the center of the site specific installation. 
A photo that was sent by chance to the artist Amos Van Gelder, inspired the creation of the site-specific installation: Empty Playground. The photograph commemorates a class of mixed-age children from Deventer. The children look straight at the camera, participating in the exciting act of capturing a memory. Shortly after the photograph was taken, everyone was murdered. Except for Felice Polak, who is sitting in the center of the photo.
At the heart of the Empty Playground project is a painting by the artist following this photograph. Like these children, most of the artist's family lived in Deventer, and many of them were murdered during the Holocaust. Empty Playground connects a private van Gelder-Odyssey to the children's personal story.