Blad 6 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1930 - 1936

This is Blad 6, from the Student Registry of the Colonial School for Girls and Women in The Hague, made in the period between 1930 and 1949 by an anonymous hand. The surface here is all about the intimate textures of paper and ink, a kind of dance between the grand and the minute. Look at those lines of cursive, each one a tiny performance of personality, looping and diving across the page, and then the way the images are inset like portals to another dimension. Notice the way the ink sits on the page, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, the pressure of the hand bearing down, a kind of choreography of attention. It is really just a list, but these small details capture the weight of bureaucracy in one place. This reminds me of Hanne Darboven's conceptual indexes, but less overtly artful. This work feels like a collaboration across time, an ongoing exchange between the past and the present, a reminder that art is less about answers and more about the questions we ask.