Blad 56 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1934

This spread from a register of students at the Colonial School for Girls and Women in The Hague, made some time between 1930 and 1949, is covered in writing, the product of a carefully applied hand. The linear framework, the drawn lines, establish a procedural system, a taxonomy in which to organise the subjects of the document. The ink is applied with precision, to transcribe names and dates. The photograph of one of the students seems like a foreign element, an intrusion of real life into an otherwise neatly organised bureaucratic procedure. The anonymous maker of this book demonstrates a kind of artistic practice that is perhaps closer to the work of On Kawara than to a formal portraitist. Kawara’s conceptual practice revolved around the simple act of recording the date of each day, thus transforming mundane routine into a meditation on time, life, and death. Here, this ledger becomes a quiet monument to the passing of time.