06 february 2025, Flor Linckens
Last chance: how a one-metre difference changes your perspective
In the dual exhibition 'One Meter Under' at AKINCI in Amsterdam, Inge Meijer and Stéphanie Saadé subtly weave their fascination with time, memory and the relationship between human beings and their environment. Both artists approach these themes with a poetic sensitivity, transforming objects, installations and photography into vessels of narrative. The title 'One Meter Under' refers to a child’s perspective and the ways in which our distance from the ground colours our perception. Saadé and Meijer, both mothers of young children, reflect on how memories take shape and how our view of the world shifts over time. This perspective permeates the exhibition: small objects take on great significance, and seemingly everyday details reveal something essential about history and emotion.
Saadé: "Spending time with my daughter Noa makes me realize that she sees some things more beautifully than I do. I like to believe it’s because of that meter—the slowly or quickly shrinking 100 centimeters—that separates us, and I try to imagine seeing from that perspective, in an attempt to share her amazement. I had started exploring the theme of childhood before having a child, drawn to its bittersweetness as it unfolded in parallel with the Lebanese Civil War. I can still remember how beautiful I once found certain things when I was Noa’s age, or should I say, her height. Remembering how we looked at the world then could help us appreciate it as a vivid feeling in the present, rather than as a beautiful but distant memory."
This downward gaze thus becomes “a lesson or an invitation to humility," Saadé explains. “The negative ‘under’ takes on a positive connotation with the virtual kneeling it implies. It also brings us closer to the ground, yet another common subject between Inge and me."
Stéphanie Saadé creates subtle, poetic works that explore the interplay between memory, time and distance. She transforms everyday objects and materials — textiles, gold, photography — into tangible expressions of elusive concepts such as displacement and estrangement from one’s surroundings. Her practice balances the personal and the universal, using her own experiences as a starting point without becoming explicitly autobiographical. In her earlier works "Elastic Distance" (2017) and "Golden Memories" (2015), for instance, she examined the tension between proximity and distance: an iPhone revealing her exact distance from the viewer without specifying her location, or childhood photographs covered in gold, glowing opaquely with memory yet remaining inaccessible to the viewer. Other works feature embroidered curtains tracing travel routes from her youth, a family portrait scarred by shrapnel, and a pearl necklace counting the days between the end of the Lebanese Civil War and her birth. In 2016, Saadé created "Home Key", a gilded key to her Beirut home — a work that implicitly also offered her trust and hospitality? Following the devastating explosion of August 2020, which destroyed her apartment entirely, the key remains as a lasting, tangible relic of her former home. The practice of Saadé, at once intimate and elusive, teeters on the fine line between the personal and the universal.
For her presentation at AKINCI, Saadé showcases, among other works, "Pyramid" (2022): an inverted stalagmite composed of stacked socks in different sizes, a subtle and physical representation of growth, where the smallest and uppermost layer is the oldest. Along the exhibition pathway, wooden building blocks — once treasured by Saadé and her brother as children — are now engraved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, revealing their current geographic coordinates. She applied the same technique to a family chessboard, which is now hung on the gallery wall. In "Stage of Life" (2022), the artist translates the concept of home into a vulnerable, material form: a physical, two-dimensional floor plan of her Paris apartment — her place of refuge since the 2020 explosion — cut from bedsheets from her childhood home in Lebanon. In "It is…" (2024), time is visualised as we measure it, with letter sequences forming distinct shapes depending on the language (Arabic, French or English), despite all sharing the Latin alphabet.
Stéphanie Saadé was born in Lebanon in 1983. She studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, followed by a postdoctoral programme at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou and residencies at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She currently divides her time between Beirut, Paris and Amsterdam. Saadé has exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial, Home Works 7 in Beirut, Mosaic Rooms in London, M HKA in Antwerp, Marres in Maastricht, Punta della Dogana in Venice, the National Gallery of Iceland in Reykjavík, the Beirut Art Centre, Parc Saint Léger, Cité de la Céramique in Sèvres, and the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah. Her work is part of the collections of Centre Pompidou, the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Frac Franche-Comté in Besançon, Centre National des Arts Plastiques in Paris, MAXXI in Rome, the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah and the Saradar Collection in Beirut.
Inge Meijer’s multidisciplinary practice operates at the intersection of documentary, film and visual art, examining the subtle dynamics between human beings and their environment. She navigates the boundary between the familiar and the estranged, often distilling complex phenomena into a single, striking image. Her practice involves frequent collaborations with writers, ecologists, musicians, and more. Through installations, films and publications, Meijer exposes hidden structures and reveals how we shape, cultivate and manipulate our surroundings.
At AKINCI, Meijer visualises the interaction between nature and culture. Her series "The MoMA Plant Collection" (2024) focuses on often-overlooked plants in museum settings, exploring how they are documented and classified — far removed from their original contexts. Using archival material, she plays with existing hierarchies. Another highlight in the exhibition is "Counting the Years" (2024), a slide projection of a photograph of a plant in a museum gallery, projected onto an elmwood tree trunk — its rings available for literal counting. Perhaps the most striking work is "Blow Softly" (2024), a fragile hut of willow branches where a choir softly sings to a group of cows and their calves. This quiet performance challenges the hierarchy between humans, animals and nature, inviting viewers to reconsider their perspective. Meanwhile, her photographs from the series "Falling, Flying, Fragment" (2024) depict a tree uprooted from its origins, suspended in a limbo between its past as a living organism and its future as construction or fuel material. Elsewhere in the exhibition, a photograph of a beehive is printed on silk, gently moving in the space.
Inge Meijer werd in 1986 geboren in Beverwijk. Ze studeerde Beeldende Kunst aan ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem en voltooide een residency aan de Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Meijer’s werk was onder meer te zien in Stedelijk Museum, Museum Arnhem, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Museum Kranenburgh, HHH Dimension Cultural in Colombia, het Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne en het Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju — waar ze deelnam aan het Asia Culture Center - Rijksakademie Dialogue and Exchange-programma. Meijer is onlangs begonnen aan een residentieprogramma bij het International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York (2025/2026). Haar werk is opgenomen in de museumcollecties van Museum Arnhem en het MoMa.
Inge Meijer was born in Beverwijk in 1986. She studied Fine Arts at ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem and completed a residency program at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her work has been exhibited at Stedelijk Museum, Museum Arnhem, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Museum Kranenburgh, HHH Dimension Cultural in Colombia, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, and the Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju – where she participated in the Asia Culture Center-Rijksakademie Dialogue and Exchange programme. Meijer recently started a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York (2025–2026). Her work is part of the collections of Museum Arnhem and the MoMA.
The exhibition 'One Meter Under' invites visitors to see through the eyes of a child, rediscovering familiar elements and finding poetry in the everyday. The dialogue between these artists reveals the ways in which we, consciously or unconsciously, shape our surroundings — and how, in turn, they shape our memories.
