House of the Heavens and rongwrong (Chinese) window intervention and four text drawings, made for rongwrong, 2015. The intervention was made in reponse to the house itself and for the group exhibition related to Ulysses Carrion about gossip and slander.

The small art space Rongwrong is located at the Binnenbantammerstraat in the area were the first Chinese immigrants arrived in Amsterdam. The neighbourhood is called Chinatown and some of the streets have both a Dutch and a Chinese name. Today the Amsterdam ’Chinatown’ is merely a economical and touristic construction, rather than then that the majority of the inhabitants is of Chinese descent. When I was a child, Dutch people could only imagine I was from Chinese descent and assuming my parents were having a Chinese restaurant.

From heresy about the house at the Binnenbantammerstraat 2:

During the Opium War the house was a place where opium was smoked;

Someone was shot in the basement;

The house has been used for a hair salon;

and the house was a Chinese restaurant

What I found interesting was that some of the earlier functions of the house were related to activities to pursuit happiness or to establish transformation through different means. That’s why I choose the title ‘House of the Heavens’.