The Tree of (Night)life.

His girlfriend asked me to mark the end of a chapter. For years he had been a prominent figure in Amsterdam's nightlife, building bars and clubs that shaped the city's scene. Then that phase closed. It was time to look back and give it the place it deserves.

A tree of life, but rooted in the night. The structure is carved from an Amsterdam stone beech: tree rings recording time the way memory does, in layers, compressed, carried forward. He was born and bred in this city, and now its wood holds his story.

The structure contains slides collected from the people who were there: staff, guests, friends. Not his own archive but what others remember, what he has to be proud of. By rearranging the slides he changes what gets projected onto the wall. Each reconfiguration is a choice: which version of the past to inhabit, which memories to bring forward into the room.

The work doesn't preserve nostalgia. It makes memory active.

Oak, glass, brass, metal. 95 x 12 cm.