Blad 115 uit Stamboek van de leerlingen der Koloniale School voor Meisjes en Vrouwen te 's-Gravenhage deel II (1930-1949) Possibly 1939

This page, ‘Blad 115’, is from a student record book made in The Hague between 1930-1949; its material nature is defined by handwritten ink entries and black and white photographs affixed onto paper. The whole thing is structured by a grid, lines drawn for names and dates, places of origin, each cell a small window into a person's history. There’s something so beautiful and haunting about grids; their promise of objective order and control, contrasting with the messiness of human lives. The entries bleed outside the lines, they are so evocative. Like in cell 1057, where the name “Marie Brouwer” seems carefully written, with the location "Bandungdorp 71" just below, scrawled in a more hurried hand. It reminds me of Hanne Darboven’s calendars, or On Kawara’s date paintings, both of whom understood art as a way to measure and record the passage of time. But unlike those artists, these anonymous pages were never intended to be seen as art. It’s precisely this accidental beauty that makes the piece so special.