Marieken Verheyen, 2001

Location: Basisschool De Triangel, Meester de Bruinplein 3, The Hague

The Schilderswijk in The Hague is an urban renewal area where about 80% of the residents are immigrants. The public elementary school De Triangel is located in this district. The schoolyard of 8x20 meters is enclosed by the school. A blind wall forms one of the walls of the square. The square is used by the smaller children. From the corridors next to the classrooms the other children look out on the wall. De Triangel, in collaboration with Stroom, invited Marieken Verheyen (1954, Amsterdam) to do 'something' with this wall. This resulted in a project in which Marieken Verheyen involved 10 other artists.

A dream house was created on the blind wall of the courtyard. In this “dream house,” the real world is turned upside down and everything adults understand as reality turns out differently here. Like an enlarged doll's house, the front of the house has been removed, allowing you to see into the rooms. The house is placed in the form of a wooden frame in front of the blind wall in the schoolyard. In this grid are put the pictures of the rooms.

For each room, a different visual artist built a model of a space to scale and then photographed it. The starting point for this model were memories of places from childhood or the dreams and fantasies these spaces evoked. This led to a wide variety of dream rooms: a room where children's heads curiously poke their heads through the wall; a room in which a large branch grows inside; a tree house from which you see the world, but where you yourself cannot be seen; or a room to unwind in a giant hammock.The rooms on the first floor are smaller.These are seen up close by preschoolers playing in the schoolyard.The rooms above are sized so that they are also easily recognizable from the corridors of the school building, where the older children have their classes.A four-step wooden staircase leads to the large, plump door with a mailbox.

Participating artists:
Lisa Couwenbergh; Frank Halmans; Remy Jungerman; Bastienne Kramer; Zeger Reyers; Elisa van Schie; Rein Jelle Terpstra; Marjan Laaper; Jaap de Jonge; Suzan Drummen.