In 2024, around 500 residents in Amsterdam died without anyone present at their funeral, and their burial was arranged solely by the council. Eenzame Uitvaart #43 (Dutch for “Lonely Funeral #43”) investigates the hidden epidemic of loneliness and the rising number of people laid to rest in anonymous graves. This project grows out of my years working in home care across the city, in spaces where I encountered people who had slowly become invisible to society.
Behind peoples doors, I was confronted with isolation that cut through boundaries of class, religion and background. Loneliness emerged as a universal condition: pervasive, unspoken and indifferent to social divides. These experiences left me grappling with a paradox: how a nation that consistently ranks among the world’s happiest, often measured through material security, can simultaneously suffer from a lack of community and collective life.
Eenzame Uitvaart #43 turns its focus toward the emotional dimensions of isolation, imagining what it might feel like to die alone. The project draws inspiration from the initiative Eenzame Uitvaart, where poets write and recite verses for those who pass away without relatives or friends to stand by them. Through photographs of nature, I explore the terrain of death through my own imagination of what a death experience might look and feel like. The work also incorporates objects given to me by cemetery staff, the people engaged in the pragmatic yet emotional labour surrounding anonymous burials. Together, the photographs and gathered objects form a dual visual language that moves between the metaphorical and the material.
Ultimately, this work reflects on the fragility of human connection and the steady dissolution of communal bonds. It invites viewers to confront the vulnerabilities that shape contemporary life and to imagine new forms of collective care.
http://www.eenzameuitvaart.nl
