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Reality

2019, multimedia installation, 42-minute audio loop, 14 speakers, 17 cyanotype prints on hospital sheets, 130 x 220 cm, 17 light bulbs

‘Reality’ was created during my three-month artist-in-residence at the psychiatric ward of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. This installation explores the boundary between reality and delusion, placing the viewer in a fictional group conversation between psychiatric patients and caregivers.

As visitors wander among life-sized cyanotype prints of reclining figures on hospital sheetswith floating hair and gently lifted shoulders—a disorienting dialogue emerges from fourteen speakers. It reflects the moment when the grip on reality slips and nothing seems as it was.

On view at the Museum of Photography in Rotterdam from September 2025 until February 2026.

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Through personal stories and anecdotes, these voices share what reality means to them and how it feels losing grip on it, bringing emotions, thoughts, and alternative perspectives into sharp focus. With an inclusive storytelling approach, ‘Reality’ unveils the deeper, elusive layers of the mind, a world often unfamiliar to us. The installation invites visitors to shed assumptionsopinions, judgments, norms, and fixed ideasand embrace diverse experiences of reality to transcend their own perspective.

As one voice reflects:
“My experience is different, and the experience of that other person is different. That doesn’t make either less true or less real. It’s just different. Perhaps, to a certain extent, we’re making up reality.”

This work lays bare the fragility of human nature, balancing hope and despair, and unlocks the diversity of experiences. The installation uses textiles and sound to make these inner struggles tangible, prompting reflection on how we define ‘real’.

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Acknowledgement more

Beautiful Distress
Mondriaan Fonds
Amsterdams Fonds voor de kunst
TextielLab
Clients and caregivers Kings County Hospital, Brooklyn (NY)
Carlos Rodriguez-Perez
Fleur Kuipers
Wilco Tuinebreijer
Christiaan Bastiaans
Francina Stolk
Zaïda Ringel

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2018, 'Reality', overview at Beautiful Distress, Amsterdam (NL)
2018, 'Reality', overview at Beautiful Distress, Amsterdam (NL)
2018, 'Reality', overview at Beautiful Distress, Amsterdam (NL)
Registration of 'Reality' at 'Beautiful Distress House', Amsterdam, including a 5 minutes audio excerpt out of 42 minutes audiotrack
Registration of 'Reality' at 'Beautiful Distress House', Amsterdam, 2 minutes