Index

An inquiry into the iconography of protest by the Dutch conceptual artist Willem de Rooij (b. 1969), Index compiles some 500 newspaper images of protest marches and collective mourning collected between 1999 and 2002.

The photographs, cut from daily newspapers over three years, were first organized in 2002 into eighteen framed panels arranged chronologically as Index: Riots, Protest, Mourning and Commemoration (as represented in newspapers, January 2000–July 2002). This 508-page artist's book reorganizes the complete series for the printed page, returning the images to the mass-circulation form in which they first appeared and documenting a way of working — clipping from print — that the shift to online image culture has made obsolete. It was published with essays by Sven Lütticken and Pablo Martínez on the occasion of exhibitions at Arnolfini, Bristol (2014–15) and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2016–17), co-published by the two institutions with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne.

De Rooij studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and worked collaboratively with Jeroen de Rijke as De Rijke/De Rooij from 1994 to 2006, representing the Netherlands at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Professor of fine art at Frankfurt's Städelschule since 2006, he works across film, installation, and textile, and is represented by Petzel Gallery, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.