There are no people in your work. Why?
I like to play with scale, without using
giveaways – no people, no furniture, no
doors. I might include a few small clues,
like wall sockets.
Lately, your photos of places feature
photos of those same places. What’s going
on? I’m putting photos of the ceiling on the
floor, photos of floors on walls. Currently,
I’m working on a solo exhibition for a Berlin
gallery. I asked the gallery to make photos of
the floor, which I’m now gluing to triangles
I’ve made. Then I’ll make an object out of
them, so that the floor dissolves in trian-
gles. By photographing existing areas and
rearranging them, I’m eradicating the border
between 2D and 3D.
What effect are you looking for? The right
amount of disorientation. I’m looking for the
point at which, when you look at my work,
you don’t know whether you love it or hate
it. You have to ask: what is it actually?
When it all comes together, the result
can be magical. Sometimes it takes a week,
sometimes longer, and sometimes it doesn’t
happen at all.What’s your goal as an artist? It’s not like
I want to change the world, but I want to
translate that feeling I have in lots of places- that ‘where am I?’ feeling. There’s some-
thing Alice in Wonderland about it. It’s not
all negative. I want to remind people that
there’s more to generic spaces than meets
the eye. They can be playful, too.
You also photograph interiors for Volkskrant
Magazine. What , if anything, do those shots
have in common with your other work? I’d
say my style comes through in everything I
do. It’s clean and static. It feels natural. What
you see is what you get.You work with an analogue camera. How do
you feel about digital photography? A digital
photo has no specific size or medium. That’s
why I call my pieces photo works. They are
very much objects. A photo work is realized
in a particular way: it has a specific size,
frame, and position. It’s important that it’s
experienced in a more physical way.What inspires you? Among many other
things, DIY stores, architects’ models, and
the work of people like Canadian photogra-
pher Lynne Cohen. She influenced my ideas
about photos as objects.Do you study the audience’s reaction to your
work? As my recent project in Toronto was
in a public space, I was able to hang around
a lot and observe people. They took lots of
selfies with my piece. I like that; there’s a
certain irony to it.
I think there’s more than one way
into my work, and that’s a good thing. People
can enjoy it on a visual or a conceptual level.You recently made a book about your work,
The Soft Edge of Space. It doesn’t look quite
like the average monograph. Normally in a
photographic catalogue you lose all sense of
scale, and I wanted to avoid that. So I made a
3D model of a gallery space about 40 or 50 cm
high, made my works very small – on a scale
of 1:20 – and put them into the model. Then
I photographed everything. The book is a
walk through the model. The funny thing is,
most people don’t see it, so now I’ve added
a ‘model’ sticker to the book cover. ●Marleen Sleeuwits’ work will be part of two group
exhibitions in the Netherlands: Healing Light at Galerie
LUMC in Leiden, on show until 18 May 2019; and Out of
Office at Singer Laren, a museum in central Laren. The
latter is scheduled to close on 7 April 2019.
marleensleeuwits.nlNot The Actual Site in Toronto asks
viewers to question: what’s the photo,
and what’s the installation?
76 PORTRAITS