I Hit You with a Flower, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam

Together with Céline Hurka, I developed the exhibition design for I Hit You With a Flower at the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. We used the light and bold weights of Tonka (released and designed by Céline Hurka in collaboration with Huw D. Williams) and Versailles Gate (also released by Céline Hurka). Both typefaces were mixed freely throughout the exhibition design, with a focus on the interplay of composition and ornament.

In addition to the existing ornaments of Versailles Gate, we developed a custom set of ornamental flowers, with each character representing an artwork or artist in the exhibition. These were used for the tags of the works. I designed custom shapes for the label stickers, and the ornaments were also incorporated into the floor plans. The exhibition primarily features light shades of pink and magenta. The exhibition design follows some conventional typographic rules while adding lots of layers of hidden meaning and Easter eggs through the usage of Versailles Gate and through the ornaments. The custom ornaments have not been released to date.

Press text of the exhibition by Stedelijk Museum Schiedam:

From 23 November 2024 to 4 May 2025, the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be showcasing I Hit You With a Flower – sugar-coated art with a punch, an eye-catchingly sweet exhibition that celebrates diversity in society. It is also a tribute to ‘girly art’, a term that has often been used as a derogatory label but is now being reclaimed as a badge of honour. On show are works by pioneers such as Lily van der Stokker, Kinke Kooi and Pipilotti Rist as well as younger artists such as Vera Gulikers, Frances Goodman, Dae Uk Kim, Jurjen Galema, Mari Katayama and Alex Naber & ChelseaBoy. More than twenty Dutch and international artists will dazzle visitors with everything from pinks and pastels to vibrant colours, gold, glitter, flowers and other motifs. Their frivolous works of art are as enticing as they are intelligent. Through a delightful and alluring approach, these artists engage you with their velvet activism and the open society they stand for. Getting involved has never been so much fun.