Interior No. 49 © Marleen Sleeuwits — *Interior No. 49* © Marleen Sleeuwits

Your work is very sculptural. Do you have a background in three-dimensional art?

I’m originally trained as a photographer and, where I initially took photographs of interiors, I gradually began to put my own stamp on them. I started to change the places I picked out. First by making small interventions, but they became more and more extreme. For example, I stapled paper towels onto walls, covering them entirely, and bored 3000 holes in a modular ceiling in order to completely transform the space.

Is any altering of the space done digitally?

Yes, but perhaps not as dramatic as most think. A lot of the work is just color correction.

You have said that you have a strong attraction to the rooms that you alter, though they are barren and grey. What about the space attracts you? Is it the opportunity to change it?

I guess I like the tension between the beauty and the ugliness these interiors often possess. I don't know whether to hate or love them, nor how to connect with them. Even though these spaces seem invisible, or grey as you mention, I feel a strong attraction to this emptiness. Therefore, I am always looking for a way to make a connection to these void spaces, with the aim of giving these locations special features and making their true identity visible. Making it as if I stripped the space of its outer layers in order to show its true core. I also often use bright sparkly colors to create a tension between the aesthetic colorful picture on the one hand and the horrible impersonal place on the other. I like it if a viewer of my work doesn’t know whether to like or hate the place / my work.

Interior No. 39 © Marleen Sleeuwits — *Interior No. 39* © Marleen Sleeuwits

Interior No. 45 © Marleen Sleeuwits — *Interior No. 45* © Marleen Sleeuwits

The rooms you shoot are located in The Hague, which you have said is primarily being rented to young artists and small businesses. What do other tenants of The Hague think of your work?

Yes, all the abandoned offices I have worked in are in the Hague, in the Netherlands. I have two small kids so it is not possible for me to be away from home for a long time. In the financial crisis, there were too many office buildings, especially brutalist ones from the 1970s. No one wanted to rent them, so they gave the spaces to young artists or small businesses. It was a good opportunity for me to experiment with this way of working without going bankrupt immediately. Before I start creating new work in such a building I walk around it for days or even weeks, photographing and exploring all corners of it and collecting all kinds of materials that were left behind. I guess It is my way of connecting with it. After that, one idea keeps coming back so I start with that. Most of the time these buildings are enormous like 16 stories high and most of it is not in use so my fellow tenants are not bothered by my work.

Interior No. 51 © Marleen Sleeuwits — *Interior No. 51* © Marleen Sleeuwits

Interior No. 37 © Marleen Sleeuwits — *Interior No. 37* © Marleen Sleeuwits

Would you ever alter a public space that is still being used as it was intended when it was built?
Yes, I did this last year in Toronto during the Contact Photo festival. I made a site-specific installation with large walls with photo prints. This was presented in an arcade that functions as a shopping mall and metro station. In the space, photos of the floor became the wall, and vice versa. You always had to ask yourself, what’s the photo and what’s the installation? It was completely blurred. I liked that.

How important is photography to your process? From what do you draw inspiration?

Very important! Although I spend most of my time building the installations, I constantly check whether they work as a 2-dimensional photo. I also play with scale and create optical illusions. It’s all about translating space into photography and vice versa. I might spend a month, or maybe three, working on a space. Then I’ll take a single picture with my 8 x 10 camera. Lots of people tell me that, for a photographer, I don’t take many photos. But my work is very photographic in character.