Sunday School with Barbara Visser

During the Sundayschool, Barbara Visser will speak about the making proces of the newly developed work Moving Rooms, Baroque Ceiling (Copy), Amsterdam Museum Depot, 2013 that she made for the exhibition Artificial Amsterdam.

With a textile piece that covers a whole wall, Barbara Visser reaches back to the first resident of the building that is now the home of de Appel arts centre, the wealthy tobacco importer Jan Agges Scholten, Lord of Aschat (1690-1772). The place where Visser’s tapestry is now to be seen was constructed for him as a richly decorated dining and reception room in the then fashionable Louis XIV style. The room had green panelling with gilded accents and a ceiling lavishly painted with didactic scenes. When the building became a school in 1899 the city council decided that it would be safer if the Green Room was moved to the Stedelijk Museum, where until the 1970s it was displayed as a period room. The panelling presently resides in crates in the depot of the Amsterdam Museum.

Visser photographed these crates, and based on these images had a tapestry woven, permitting the period room to return to its original location again in an unexpected form. Her tapestry here lies partially on the floor, a reference to the 18th century custom of reusing expensive wall paper and tapestries after a moving house, even if the new space was not really suitable. Visser demonstrates that justice is not always done to historic artefacts in a new location, but also that a different context and use of historical materials (the rolled up tapestry on the floor) can lead to entirely new and unforeseen expressive potential.

Entrance: regular
Please make reservations by sending an email to reservation [​at​] deappel.nl