The concept of place is an elusive, unstable creature, a boundary that dissolves the moment we try to define it. Once anchored to the land, to the certainties of geography and architecture, today the notion of place expands into a fluid dimension, an endless interweaving of the physical and the digital, of lived and imagined spaces. We no longer inhabit only concrete locations but also digital territories – hybrid environments where perception multiplies and the sense of belonging becomes increasingly volatile.
“A Place Has a Place Has a Place”, curated by Rachel Lee Pearl and Eleonora Ortolani at WILLIE in Zaandam, just minutes from Amsterdam, situates itself within this fracture between stability and transformation, questioning what it truly means to occupy a space, to traverse it, to leave a trace.
“In a world where physical and digital landscapes blur,” explains Rachel Lee Pearl, “these artists explore geography, temporality, and meaning – fixed in form yet continuously renegotiated through perception, culture, and interaction.” The very title of the exhibition repeats like a mantra, an obsession folding in on itself: ‘A Place Has a Place Has a Place’. A statement that, through repetition, loses its claim to truth, opening itself to infinite interpretations.
The artworks on display do not simply represent space; they question, deconstruct, and reassemble it, revealing its shifting nature. “Going beyond the human sphere,” Pearl emphasizes, “‘A Place Has a Place Has a Place’ extends to multispecies and non-human interactions, inviting us to reflect on how every entity shapes – and is in turn shaped by – the temporal and spatial environments it inhabits.”
The exhibition moves from the meteorological-inspired sensory experience of Deluge Collective, who translate atmospheric data into visual and sonic vibrations, to Imagination of Things, a speculative video game that reimagines Amsterdam’s Red Light District as a politically and economically autonomous space. Each work plays with the tension between real and virtual, between what exists and what could exist.
Rachy McEwan builds a bridge between painting and technology, creating a work that reacts to environmental data, as if the landscape itself had a say in its own representation.
Eleonora Ortolani, on the other hand, explores the deep connections between memory and geography through food, suggesting that the sense of place is not just about spatial coordinates but also about shared histories, flavors, and repeated gestures.
We no longer inhabit only concrete locations but also digital territories – hybrid environments where perception multiplies and the sense of belonging becomes increasingly volatile.
Rachel Lee Pearl plunges us underwater with her installation, where the marine world becomes a continuously evolving visual archive, a space that evades any attempt at fixation. Finally, Jess Rowley stages a sonic ritual in which the memory of oral traditions merges with the present, creating an experience that is not just to be observed but lived – repeating an ancient game found in different cultures, forging a connection with our ancestors.
WILLIE, a young and experimental space, is the perfect setting for an exhibition that aims to be more than just a display of works, but rather a terrain where ideas take shape, clash, and merge. Here, the concept of place is never taken for granted but rather posed as an open-ended question, a provocation.
What emerges from “A Place Has a Place Has a Place” is not a single answer, but a spectrum of possibilities – glimpses through which we can view the world from new perspectives. Perhaps a place, in the end, is nothing more than an ephemeral trace, something that exists only as long as we inhabit and imagine it – before letting it dissolve, only to rediscover it elsewhere.
Opening image: Eleonora Ortolani, To Know a Place, 2025. “A Place Has a Place Has a Place”, curated by Rachel Lee Pearl and Eleonora Ortolani, WILLIE, Zaandam, Netherlands. Courtesy WILLIE
