Foundation Art and Public Space
Harald Vlugt
Noah’s Train
photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
artist:
Vlugt
located in:
Weesp
,
Uithoorn
,
IJmuiden
,
Maartensdijk
,
Alkmaar
,
client:
Stichting de Opbouw
Through the whimsical landscape of mountains, palm trees and a sky filled with planets, rides a jolly train. The passengers are not regular passengers but, instead, animals. A giraffe sticks his neck outside while, poking out of the last window, is the beak of an exotic bird. In and around the train, one sees even more animals as they fly and run and play with children.
In putting together this tableau, Harald Vlugt drew from his extensive image archive where he stores around 750.000 photos, each categorized by topic. To find out what the children of the Begeleid Wonen (Supervised Living) project, De Opbouw (The Advancement), would consider beautiful, he visited 20 children’s playrooms and spoke with the children. Almost all of the rooms contained pictures of favorite animals and, in one boy’s room, Vlugt came across the photo of a train. He translated his findings into ‘De trein van Noach’ (Noah’s Train). Copies of this work, in the form of digital prints glued onto holographic adhesive plastic, hang in the central lobbies of each of the five Begeleid Wonen locations. The picture is divided into twelve individually-framed squares. The children living in De Opbouw were able to approach the artist so that they could modify part of the work and hang it up in their own rooms.
photo: Gert Jan van Rooij
