Annotaties c. 1828 - 1897

Curator: Well, this unassuming sheet is entitled "Annotaties" and dates from somewhere between 1828 and 1897. The artist, Adrianus Eversen, used mixed media - drawing with both ink and graphite pencil on paper. What are your immediate thoughts? Editor: Honestly, it reminds me of a grocery list I scribble on the back of an envelope. But I suspect that simplicity might be deceptive. Curator: Absolutely. On its surface, it looks like a ledger – perhaps a shopping list, or maybe even something related to accounting. Note how the artist meticulously lists items and tallies prices. The language seems rooted in economics, offering a candid look into 19th-century capitalist endeavors. Editor: Exactly. In whose service were those annotations inscribed? Are these prices of daily survival, or profits extracted from an exploitative structure? It brings up questions of economic justice that resonate to this day. Curator: Or perhaps it’s both personal and professional? It’s really interesting to ponder who or what these jottings served. What story did this particular document tell within its own era? I get a kind of melancholic echo reading those notations… Editor: Absolutely, this tension is palpable. And it calls into question the very act of cataloging and quantifying experience, then as well as today. How many aspects of our existence become reduced to these kinds of metrics and measures? It also highlights that archives are rarely neutral; someone chose to preserve this document. Why this fragment? Whose narratives does this omission erase? Curator: The questions never stop, do they? Editor: And that’s precisely how we honor art’s critical function: by examining our roles and obligations toward a shared future. Curator: Exactly. Perhaps what lingers most is a bittersweet reminder: like all those lost, or nearly-lost, lists that drift on breezes toward other unexpected readings.