2023
graduation project from KABK (master Non Linear Narrative)
mirror installation
riso printed publication
video render
riso animation


The installation offers an alternative guide to the actual palaces of The Hague, home of the Dutch royal family, including those that cater to the many, instead of the royal few. Focusing on fifteen shops, restaurants and stores in The Hague that are called palaces, attention is brought to the extraordinariness of everyday life, with its subtle yet intriguing importance. These everyday palaces provide space for ordinary yet fundamental activities such as eating, getting a haircut, and creating community and belonging for customers. They are more substantial in the city than any royal palace.

A series of engraved mirrors honour fifteen of these businesses, uplifting the importance of the ordinary and creating a monument for the small entrepreneurs that shape the city for its people. A video work shows an imaginary route in a landscape constructed of economic palaces. The project aims to raise attention and urging guests to visit the economic palaces instead of the royal one(s) in order to appreciate palaces of the mundane.

Men's Hair Palace. Polyetherpaleis. Golden Palace. Athene's Palace. Platinum Palace. Roti Palace. Kaa Lun Palace. Haringpaleis. Café Palace. Rick's Vispaleis. Peter Vis and Snackpaleis. Jasmine Palace. Scheveningen Vispaleis. Suezkanaal Vispaleis. Hair Palace.

*Full work shared on request

photography: Karolina Uskakovych, Roel Backaert

Places Called Palaces








2022
publication

Pepper acquired forms in countless ways. Pepper represents national treasures and commemoration of past times. Pepper is the ingredient to create a paprika powder, and pepper is kept safely in archives and genebanks. Pepper is a vegetable that requires constant perfecting and breeding by biologists and breeding companies. Pepper constructs one chain in the endless fruit and vegetable production, kept in continuous movement by the output of capitalism and commercial value. Pepper is produced from the best crop seeds of genebanks and prepared in laboratories and greenhouses so peppers can have prolonged shelf life. Pepper is made to be better quality, and its colour becomes more suitable for thecustomer’s appetite. Pepper is archived and deconstructed in research centres. Pepper is measured, locked, and kept safely. Pepper symbolises globalisation and forming Eastern Europe into a Western shape. Pepper acquired forms in countless ways.

Sides of a Pepper







2022
installation
KABK

In 1990 a four-day protest against increasing petrol prices took place in Hungary. Taxi drivers not only expressed their disagreement, but by blocking roads, they temporarily paralysed traffic country-wide. Using this event as a starting point, the installation introduces international protests against rising petrol prices from 1990 until 2022. Even though they differ in
space and time, they are still strongly connected by their shared purpose for going out on the streets. Using a combination of headlines, location, and time the installation creates a timeline and graph of crises; it emphasises the ever-lasting presence and the increasing role of gasoline. The air-freshener trees remind us of the question's relevance as global symbols of cars and traffic.

Rising Prices and Fuel Crises







2019
publication

There are numerous car repair shops around in Rotterdam North. It is debatable how long they will keep working since it is unlikely for all of them to survive the social consequences of globalization and the ongoing gentrification of the neighbourhood. My aim was to visit as many as I can and take pictures to preserve this form of them.

The photos were taken with a Sony Mavica camera which uses floppy disk as the main recording medium. Although it was one of the pioneers of the digital era, the Mavica line has been discontinued since Sony started to produce cameras using Memory Sticks for storage. I use this format to call attention to the fact that the car repair shops and Mavica cameras might share the
same end.

Dead Ends