Mirjam de Zeeuw "Reflection"

‘In 1984, when Mirjam de Zeeuw ( 1959)worked 4 1/2 hours a day for a month in an empty Amsterdam prison cell, she regarded the rectangular space as a three-dimensional sheet of paper. Drawings and photos of the cell were painted and coloured. In addition, De Zeeuw described her experiences in the cell which bore the traces of people who had spent a part of their lives there. Colours and texts were formal translations of external and internal ingredients of the space. A colour (incorporated. for instance into a photo of the cell) illustrated and accentuated her relationship with that space. And a text, her own or quoted, a jotting such as a prisoner makes on the wall: pervaded by the past, the words related to the stay in the prison. De Zeeuw incorporated personal details into the space where she worked but in a stylized form. De Appel's glass gallery forms the structure of her installation. She has chosen various colours for the panes which in turn define the choice of photos of building exteriors and interiors used. The coloured light will reflect on the images each of which represents a fragment from her childhood. Thus. she looks back on the constructed images of her past in the form of coloured reflections.’ (‘A sudden proximity’, Newsletter De Appel, 2 (1987) 1.)