The Kunstmuseum Den Haag has invited artist Hadassah Emmerich to create a new mural in one of the museum’s monumental stairwells. The mural, “Petals Pulp Papaya Plunge,” was designed specifically for this space and envelops the visitor in a lush world of abstracted plants and fruits. Inspired by the batik panels in one of the Kunstmuseum’s historic style rooms, the work engages in a dialogue with the architecture of the museum building, designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage. With this iconic commission, the museum is taking a step toward structurally providing space for female artists. Petals Pulp Papaya Plunge opens February 14th.
With the Hadassah Emmerich mural, the museum promotes diversity and inclusivity in our collection by literally claiming space for female artists within the museum as an institution and the museum canon.
– Margriet Schavemaker, director of the Kunstmuseum The Hague
In the monumental staircase, which towers over seven meters high, Hadassah Emmerich has created an abstract, colorful plant world: a lush universe of meandering leaves, suggestive fruit shapes, and distorted peacock eyes. A recurring motif in various sizes and color combinations is that of the papaya. Emmerich chose this fruit not only for its sexual connotations but also because of her interest in the idea of bastardization: the bastard, the hybrid species that completely belongs nowhere yet is simultaneously very strong. This tension forms a core motif in her work.
Emmerich’s personal background plays a significant role in this. She grew up in a Catholic village in Limburg as a non-Catholic girl, with a Chinese-Indonesian father and a German mother. From an early age, she experienced what it means to be seen as an outsider. In her work, she questions the idea of an “original” or “pure” identity and instead celebrates blending and hybridity across cultural, racial, and sexual dimensions.
Emmerich created the enormous mural using a specific stencil technique: she cuts shapes from pieces of vinyl flooring, rolls them with printing ink, often in subtle color gradients, and then prints them onto canvas, paper, or—in this case—the wall. This technique results in a kind of monoprint: each work is unique, but motifs and stencils recur frequently.
The result is an ambiguous abstraction. The enlarged, tropically colored motifs—the seductive peacock eyes, the bananas, the papayas—are so distorted that they simultaneously evoke body parts. While the erotic references were much more explicit earlier in her oeuvre, Emmerich here undermines a straightforward reading. The historical perspective of the exoticizing male gaze is replaced by an aesthetic that is ambiguous and multifaceted. “I want to break through that one-way perspective and play with the erotic female gaze in a positive and humorous way.”
Site specific
The design for the staircase is explicitly site-specific . Emmerich drew inspiration from the batik panels in the Dijsselhof Room, one of the museum’s historical style rooms (located on the first floor near Emmerich’s mural). Early in her career, Emmerich became fascinated with batik, the Indonesian technique for dyeing fabric. Besides batik’s formal and visual qualities, its historical layers also play a significant role in her work: the colonial context, cultural appropriation, and mutual aesthetic influences associated with this technique.
Furthermore, the mural engages in an explicit dialogue with the building itself. For a long time, it was overlooked that architect Berlage, during his 1923 visit to the then-colony of the Dutch East Indies, was strongly inspired by the architecture there, a fact that is also reflected in the museum’s architecture. This new mural addresses and visualizes that aspect of the architecture.
Visible statement
The Kunstmuseum’s identity is largely defined by its collection, which historically has primarily consisted of works by male artists. The museum is actively working to bring more balance to the collection, including by literally tackling the museum’s walls. With an eye toward polyphony and broader representation, the Kunstmuseum aims to consistently give female artists a prominent place.
In this context, the Kunstmuseum is inviting three female artists to create new murals in three of its four monumental stairwells. Hadassah Emmerich is the first artist, followed later this year by Natasja Kensmil and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum. The new murals will give the building and collection a visible, contemporary boost while simultaneously building on the museum’s long tradition of murals.
About Hadassah Emmerich
Hadassah Emmerich (Heerlen, Netherlands, 1974) lives and works in Brussels. After studying painting at the art academy in Maastricht, she continued her studies at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Ghent and later at Goldsmiths College in London. From an early age, Emmerich worked with a form of expanded painting , experimenting with a variety of paint types, techniques, and media. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including Kunsthal Kade, the Bonnenfanten Museum, and the Centraal Museum. Her work is included in the collections of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Muzee Oostende, Museum Voorlinden, and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, among others. Her work can also be seen in the form of murals in public spaces, for example, at the Erasmus Hospital in Rotterdam, the Papiermolentunnel in Groningen, and the Dutch Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. Emmerich is represented by Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.