Esther Hovers

Windows began to take shape in 2020, during the Covid pandemic. Like so many others, Esther Hovers witnessed these peculiar circumstances and developed her project around the sudden transformation of The Hague into an inert void. This Dutch artist created a series of collages of people directly on the windows in her flat. Merging past and present, her compositions combine snapshots of current residents taken by the photographer with pictures of former residents obtained from the city’s archives. She cut out their silhouettes, which then seemed to float in the middle of deserted streets, in areas that were no longer attainable.

With her Windows series – developed for the Stroom Den Haag art centre and adapted into an installation designed specifically for Images Vevey – Esther Hovers repopulated her city and brought public areas back to life.