Mural in staircase of Langeveld: ‘Fantastic that students will walk past my work every day’

Bright colours, organic shapes and large surfaces. The two stairwells in Langeveld are being decorated with a gigantic, colourful mural. Under the guidance of visual artist Hadassah Emmerich, four Rotterdam-based makers are working full-time to transform the grey concrete surfaces of the stairwells.

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In room 2.04 of Langeveld, Emmerich has set up a temporary studio. Tables and chairs have made way for paint pots and a mixing station where the colours are blended. A4 sheets with designs hang on the walls. On the floor lie pieces of vinyl flooring, cut into large natural shapes sometimes as long as two metres. Emmerich calls them her ‘stencils’. “In this space we do the preparatory work”, says the artist as she sits on the floor colouring in a stencil in the shape of a large tree leaf with thick layers of mint green paint. “We colour in the stencils with paint. Later, two team members will press them onto the wall of the stairwell. Like a kind of stamp.”

In the stairwell, level with the third floor of the building, two men stand on scaffolding. Using filling knives, they press a stencil onto the wall. “It takes at least twenty to thirty minutes to get one of these stencils onto the wall”, Emmerich explains. “It is very intensive work. You need to use a lot of force so the ink imprints well onto the concrete.” Emmerich keeps the used stencils. She wants to reuse them in other artworks.

Emmerich, who grew up in Limburg and lives in Brussels, loved drawing and painting as a child. She studied at various art academies and describes herself as an ‘expanded painter’. “I am a painter, but my work is not limited to canvas alone. I also work on walls, for example.”

The artist considers it an honour that her work is being placed on university walls: “Soon all these young people, students who are going to conquer the world, will be walking past my work. That is fantastic.”

For the next six weeks, Emmerich will continue working on her project in Langeveld.