Arti et Amicitiae, 2015

In 2015 artist’s society Arti et Amicitiae celebrated its 175 year existence. To commemorate this anniversary, Arti member Barbara Broekman was asked to design a carpet for the staircase in the main hall.

Broekman studied the club’s 175 year long history and chose to design a carpet in which various elements from the past and present come together. In the carpet she honours historical and contemporary members of the society while reflecting on Arti’s democratic, artist led organisation and the club’s historical interior decoration.
The carpet covers the main staircase in the Arti clubhouse. The design consists of 144 square tiles arranged in a grid. These tiles represent 288 members throughout Arti's history. Each of the 144 tiles is composed of an artwork representing a historical member, and an artwork representing a contemporary member. The selected artworks are arranged according to contrasting light and dark elements. 

The square grid is a reference to the past and was chosen to reflect on the society's cassette ceiling, part of the historical interior designed by Dutch architect Berlage. The carpet in contrast is a reference to the modern, and was created using a state of the art printing technique that prints 9 dots per square millimetre to achieve an unimaginable amount of colour and detail.