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The Objective Truth Factory
von • by Carlijn Kingma

www.carlijnkingma.com

She thinks of herself as a cartographer of society: Carlijn

Kingma, a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at Delft Uni-

versity of Technology, takes us on a journey into dark land-

scapes of memory with a series of drawings. Her so-called

mindscapes are imaginary architectural worlds composed of

past and present utopias of the future. They testify as much to

the illustrator’s talent for architectural observation as to her

profound knowledge of art history. Quite often, as in The Ob-

jective Truth Factory (pp. 26/27), a Brueghelian viewer’s per-

spective is adopted or the grotesque-mechanical bustle of Hi-

eronymus Bosch’s infernal scenarios is referenced. Most strik-

ing, however, is the proximity to the dimensionless dungeon

and ruin worlds of Giovanni Battista Piranesi. By merging Pi-

ranesi’s historical image of society from the eighteenth century

with the worlds of ideas of our own time—capitalism, religion,

politics, visions of an ideal city—Kingma reveals to us that,

sadly enough, nothing is likely to change: what remains in the

end are sketchy ideas of a better future. In A History of the

Utopian Tradition (pp. 40/41), Kingma therefore stacks architec-

tural utopias on top of each other like archaeological layers—

from the daring dome constructions of ancient times to the
Gothic striving for infinite heights to the boldness of Italian fu-

turism: in the end, man only builds to build better in the fu-

ture, Kingma seems to be telling us. It is therefore no coinci-

dence that we are repeatedly taken back to the Tower of Babel

when contemplating her large-format works of art.