Closed Architecture

This project is an introduction to ‘Closed Architecture’, the 2004 graduation project of Freedom Party MP Fleur Agema. Visual artist Jonas Staal offers insight into Agema’s development as architect and politician. Moreover, he investigates the extent to which her architectonic work exerts an influence on current government policies and hence the organization of our present society.

Agema’s graduation project comprises a sketch for a new prison model, which she has developed during her Master’s degree in Interior Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts. Jonas Staal expanded Agema’s sketches into a fully developed model, which visualizes her thoughts in detail, and thereby offers new insight into her ideas and concepts. Several architects and designers have assisted Staal during his research, which has resulted in a number of digital renderings, like the one on show at Onomatopee, and a scale model.

In an ongoing series of multidisciplinary installations, movies, and publications entitled Art, Property of Politics, visual artist Jonas Staal investigates the meaning of visual art within contemporary political practice. His research extends from the exhibition of art collections of political parties to the mapping of the (former) artistic practices of individual politicians. Departing from such concrete case studies, he investigates the current meaning of ideology and the way in which it is reflected in ideas that determine it, such as freedom.