Duty Free Zone
Eindhoven Centraal Station, Dutch Design Week 2024
Spatial Design, Branding and Curation
with Femke Hoppenbrouwer, Fedora Boonaert and Clara Sika Helbo
“Duty Free Zone” is an exhibit that parodies the airport experience, addressing issues of borders, climate, tourism, consumerism and non-places. It challenged the notion of duty-free, and asks “when living in a duty-free world, what are our duties?”
Situated within the former NS offices of Eindhoven Centraal, The Duty Free Zone exhibits work from 15 artists based in the Netherlands. Visitors are invited above the main station hall into an interstitial world overlooking the railroad tracks.
The duty-free zone is a strange yet familiar place of commercial meandering, one that you can’t point to on a map, a clock or your bank account statement. However, in the Duty Free Zone exhibit, kitsch souvenirs are replaced with thought provoking works that speak to the complex interconnectness of the world outside the airport.
