Kameelrijder (Camel Rider)

A maid in white gloves and a lion-faced collar sits side-saddle on a tall beast in a shed crammed with caged, long-beaked birds, a drum, a spade, fish on the floor, a child at the window. The exotic mount ridden by the household servant is the world turned upside down, the verkeerde wereld of old Dutch prints. The crowded hoard around her is really a wunderkammer, the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities that was the museum's ancestor, a room where the exotic and the everyday were piled together to mirror the whole world. Wiedijk turns that cabinet into a creature and sets it walking, carrying freedom and captivity, home and abroad, side by side, with no comment but the loaded silence of the collection.