Art News

Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg presents Les vacances de Monsieur Grunberg at Foam in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM.- Summer holidays and photos are inextricably linked: the first thing that people pack, after their passport, tickets and money, is their camera. Les vacances de Monsieur Grunberg, a project by novelist Arnon Grunberg and visual artist Wendela Hubrecht, is on show at Foam from 10 February 2012. Les vacances is a sequel to Grunberg’s ’embedment’ with various families from the Leidsche Rijn suburb in Utrecht. ‘Embedded’ here means staying with a family and participating in their daily activities. Grunberg wanted to more extensively investigate the phenomenon of the family by taking a holiday with them: ‘A family on a holiday is a family in a warzone – or to be more concise – in a state of war. That’s how I see it.’ It started in 2010 with a notice in the newspapers. Following a two-day audition with thirty families at the Holiday Inn in Amsterdam, Grunberg chose the Maud and Nick van der Poel family, who took