‘Inside Archive’, permanent installation by Rik Dijkhuizen

A public archive of 37 years artist initiative.

Rik Dijkhuizen
Permantent installation
Opening: 1 June 2021

With Inside Archive, artist and HMK alumnus Rik Dijkhuizen places a monumental yet understated yellow cube on the mezzanine of HMK’s minty green reception area, which explores practices of care within the context of spatial design, archiving, and mental wellbeing. The permanent installation double-functions as a public archive and private hide-out and reflects on the idea of the archive as a living body that needs continuous caring, and living bodies as archives that need caring sanctuaries to withdraw to in times of (personal) peril.

A place where we keep safe what we cherish deeply and value most. A place of caring, of memory and thought, around which we commune, learn and talk – or in which we hide and spend time alone, to find solace in soothing seclusion.

Inside Archive aims to unite two apparently opposing needs in one spatial intervention. The archive, which often remains hidden from sight, is made public by placing it in an accessible structure in the middle of the space, in and around which users gather in close proximity to its contents to exchange thought and knowledge. An intimate seat inside the cube offers a place to rest and recuperate in privacy; a temporary escape from a world that is highly individualized and flooded with crises, much like cabins in mountainous landscapes for passing travellers in need of shelter.

Hoofdtuk Time van het Slow Burn programma

Inside Archive is part of the chapter Time of HMK’s 2020 programme Slow Burn, which centred around notions of care. HMK took time to care for the archive (the institutional time) and to reflect on the current temporal predicament. In addition, the project ties in with the theme of HMK’s current year programme, On Shelter, which reflects on providing sanctuary and safety in challenging times. To coincide with the project, Dijkhuizen worked together with HMK’s trainee Tim Kaarsemaker to sort and organise the archive material that HMK has collected over the years. His findings will be brought together in a written introduction and made available online and in the installation.

Bio: Rik Dijkhuizen

Rik Dijkhuizen (1988) is a visual artist whose multidisciplinary work reflects on overcoming (mental) challenges in a hyper-individualistic world. In his scenographic installations and imaginative narratives, he uses a wide array of (personal) references and connotations to create sanctuaries for wellbeing. These topos are otherworldly places that feel strangely familiar and exist somewhere between memory and fiction. Water is a recurring material in his work and his favourite colour is yellow. In 2020, Dijkhuizen placed a swimming pool oasis in HMK’s exhibition space for the summer project Inside Poolside – around which we gathered as watery bodies to be like water.

Made possible with the help of: Mondriaan Fonds, Gemeente Hoorn