No

Tijdsbeeld by Gaea Schoeters, hand-blown in glass by Frederik Rombach

This Tijdsbeeld begins with a simple word: no.

A word that is as unambiguous as it is fundamental. Yet in practice, it often proves difficult to hear, especially when spoken by women. All too often it is not heard or not respected.
Misunderstood. Ignored.

And yet saying no requires great courage and effort—much like blowing glass. It is the expression of a feeling that arises within the body and forces its way outward, as a cry or as a softly spoken word, drawing a clear boundary. No.

In the installation, the word appears as glass: as transparent as it is fragile. Something that is all too easy to overlook. When an expressed boundary is not acknowledged, that vulnerability shatters into fragments. Those shards represent the consequences of ignoring a no: wounds that women often carry with them for the rest of their lives. But glass cuts both ways. Those unwilling to hear no can also be cut by it. Whoever crosses a boundary must bear the consequences of that act. Even if those consequences are all too often of a different order. The glass on the floor is not truly dangerous and causes little more than superficial injuries—just as, in reality, boundary-crossing behaviour all too often goes unpunished.

This Tijdsbeeld thus reflects a tension between vulnerability, responsibility and even perpetration. It reminds us that no is not an ambiguous signal but a clear boundary. And that failing to hear or acknowledge that word has consequences—sometimes visible, sometimes hidden, but rarely without leaving traces.

The choice of glass is no coincidence. The material unites the same opposites that come together in this work: it is born from breath and fire; it is both hard and fragile, transparent and uncompromising. In the hands of glassblower Frederik Rombach, that tension takes on a tangible form. His craftsmanship makes visible how a single breath can grow into a fragile object that embodies both protection and confrontation. In this way, no becomes more than a word: it becomes a physical presence that compels us to pause and reflect on both the strength and the vulnerability of a boundary that should never be open to question.