Opening of The Secret House
Odapark, Venray
Sunday, 27 September 2025; 2:00 p.m.

I look at a photograph by Ingeborg Meulendijks. A room, photographed in black and white. Filtered light shines in. Vague shadows fill the room. There is a suggestion of a season. Everything is still in this photograph; it is in perfect tranquillity.

And that is precisely why it makes me think of speed.
Of haste.
The unrest of the world.
My own restlessness.
Has the world become faster?
Have we become faster?

Our world is spinning faster, because we want it to be faster, yes, we want it to be faster. Now even faster, even more efficient, and therefore even busier, always a little further. We run, we sprint, and as a result, even when sitting down, we have a high heart rate and are also on the run in our dreams.
But the world has been spinning at the same pace for billions of years. We can keep up with it, or not. But then it's just like a treadmill. You have to adapt. Are you going too slow, or too fast?
Then you'll inevitably fall flat on your face.

I look at Ingeborg's room again. And then slowly close my eyes.
I hear time. Time ticks at a different pace here.
Not that time is running behind here; it's more that the clocks are too fast, ticking so hastily that they stumble over their own second hands.
Here, time does not run ahead, it does not even tick.
Time in Ingeborg's work flows.
You see time in the sunlight streaming through the curtains. In a tree leaf that changes colour. In the endless precision with which a miniature table has been assembled.
As if Ingeborg has discovered it: the right rhythm. The tempo. Not too slow or too fast, but just fast enough not to tumble off this planetary treadmill.

The Secret House of Ingeborg keeps pace with this planet. And that touches me. Just like the impressive dedication from which this work originated. The exhibition, and Ingeborg's accompanying project, is called the Secret House. This Secret House has been under construction for almost thirty years; a construction that takes place in the secret hours of the day. In the blue light of the early morning, the golden hour of sunrise and in the long shadows of the evening. The Secret House has no construction site with jackhammers, circular saws and roaring lorries. Instead, hours are spent smoothing a plank with sandpaper; lights are fiddled with and fabric patterns are cut with the precision of a clockmaker. The silence is occasionally interrupted by a church bell in the distance, or a precisely placed sigh at the end of the day, when another piece of this monumental structure has fallen into place.

The Secret House has many rooms. It is an exploration of how we could live, what kind of space would suit us, what kind of space could bring us into harmony with the earth we live on. It is a palace of ideas, a palace of poetry, but without the ostentation and excess associated with the word palace, yet including the attention to detail, the space, the elegance. The Secret House fits in your head, in your room, in your house, in your life.

The Secret House has many rooms. They seem empty, minimally filled with presence. But if you look closely, you can see that the rooms are populated. This is not the house of a loner; it is a house where people come together, a total work of art by a group of artists who have synchronised their clocks over the past few months and settled together in this Secret House.

You see Ingeborg, of course, for example in a precisely placed cushion on a bed. You see Bas de Weerd and Luc Knapen who, with their carpenter's eye, translated the scale models to our human scale. You see Charlotte Lagro who followed Ingeborg closely with her camera and shows us wordlessly what Ingeborg's artistry means. You see Rick van der Linden, who created a magnificent graphic design in which every millimetre is perfect. You see Linda Robben, who accurately placed Ingeborg's work in this space and also assembled the most difficult table bases without complaining. You see Eireen Schreurs, who opened up new rooms in Ingeborg's oeuvre in her text. You see Frank Brouwers, who turned hanging photos into a true art form: in one perfect movement from floor to wall and click; it hangs perfectly. And of course you see Hester van Tongerlo, who, like a dancer on stockinged feet, tackled the wooden floor with a sander and connected speakers as if it were a trapeze. Let me also mention our volunteers; who painted walls, sanded panels and fitted the windows with suitable film. To be able to experience this collaboration, to be part of it, was a real privilege.

It is an equally great privilege that we at Odapark, team and volunteers, will be able to serve as caretakers of The Secret House in the coming months. We hope to welcome many guests and send them out again as friends.
So to all of you: wipe your feet, hang up your coats, and welcome to the Secret House of Ingeborg Meulendijks.


Joep Vossebeld
artistic director of Odapark and writer


The text was written in conjunction with the solo exhibition Ingeborg Meulendijks: Het Geheime Huis at Odapark, Venray (The Netherlands), from 28 September 2025 to 4 January 2026.

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