A courtroom can be a landscape of artistic inspiration, according to the theme of an unusual exhibition of pastel drawings by Dutch artist Machteld Aardse.
Aardse does not just focus on suspects—her hand captures family members, police officers, security guards, judges, lawyers, media and official court hosts as well as those accused of crime. Her exhibition, The Courtroom as a Landscape, opens in Amsterdam Courthouse on 7 February, and has already attracted a flurry of attention, including from lawyers and flattered members of court staff.
“When I came to Amsterdam to study in 1992, I wanted to earn money, I could draw and I quickly ended up at the court,” the artist says. “The first time, the security guards came in and warned that the suspect was mentally unstable and could be dangerous. I sat there with my pencils and the man came in.
“He could even have been a neighbour: you saw nothing of the gruesome story of what he had done in his face. You had the face but you also had the context, the story.”
This was the start of Aardse's long fascination with the drama of the courtroom. Since 2021, the 52-year-old has been working with the criminologist Tasniem Anwar, and assistant Robbin Talens, after being asked to create pastel sketches to accompany Anwar’s thesis on terrorism trials.
“She wanted to bring more art into it, for example, poetry,” Aardse says. “I’ve done court sketching, and I really wanted to start again: it was a perfect match.”
The 250 sketches on show in Amsterdam—including blown-up posters and life-sized works—are based on four different cases: alleged terrorism, terrorism financing and violence surrounding a football match that took place in Amsterdam last November. Alongside the drawings, the artist writes down words and phrases, mostly in Dutch, sometimes in English: “radicalised”, “found not guilty”, and “you were the sniper? No”.
She created these works at the courthouse in Rotterdam, at a secure facility near Schiphol airport, and Amsterdam’s court—all to the fascination of staff, who apparently did not mind being portrayed in her impressionistic style. “Pastel is a soft medium,” Aardse says, “...it is also vulnerable—human.”
The artist believes her images and words capture moments in a process throughout which every individual is a small, moving part—an ecosystem of democracy and justice. “The story is more complex than just what you see,” she concludes.
- The Courtroom as a Landscape, at Amsterdam Courthouse, Amerstdam, 7 February - 31 March
