A Family Portrait 2014/2024

Tickets can be bought through the website of Het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Is there such a thing as an “average Dutch family?” If so, where do they live, how do they spend their time and what do they consider “normal?” In 2014, after conducting research at Statistics Netherlands, the artist duo Sander Breure and Witte van Hulzen found a family as average as can be. With the family members’ permission, the artists eavesdropped on them in their home non-stop for a week.

The makers used the audio transcripts to create a script which is faithfully reenacted by four actors. The resulting performance is an extremely artificial, alienating version of real conversations—including the garbled articulations of authentic speech—that contain the banality as well as the intimacy of our lives. In a time when our devices can potentially record all our conversations, these scenes also hold up a mirror to us: what consequences does this everyday surveillance have on our behavior?

In 2024, Breure and Van Hulzen recorded the family again. Ten years later, the eldest daughter is about to leave the parental home, while the teenage son devotes most of his time to his game console. The two eras are performed for the audience in a double bill.

Performed by: Wine Dierickx, Matijs Jansen, Lisa van der Wiel, Abel Peeters, Jonne van der Moolen, Mees Oude Nijhuis, Juliette van Leeuwen

Commissioned by: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam Supported by: Mondriaan Fonds