Knoalster - Post Middendorp Opdracht 2011

Post Middendorp Commission 2011

Eva Gjaltema (b. 1979) looks back on her childhood in Stadskanaal, after 12 years of living in the Randstad. At the time she had been unable to recognise the deprived social-economic conditions which the region had experienced for generations, and which still characterised the years when she was in primary school in the 1980s, because she then had no basis for making a comparison. With the present economic crisis as her jumping-off point, Eva went in search of similarities with the recession of the 1980s. She investigates the region’s identity, beginning with her own recollections and those of her classmates, with whom she again sought contact. In particular, she follows the life of her former classmate Jan Kruize, who still lives in the area with his family.

Post Middendorp Commission

This exhibition is the result of the 2010 Post Middendorp Commission, which had CRISIS! as its theme. The Province of Groningen awards this commission every two years, with the intention of making a contribution to the ‘visual historiography of our province’.

This past summer the exhibition was also part of a national photography show in the Kunsthal Rotterdam: voor de lens: CRISIS! The twelve participating photographers all worked on commissions from local or provincial governments.