Schattige babyvoetjes

Schattige babyvoetjes (Cute baby feet) is on display at the NDSM-wharf since September 26, 2025 and will remain visible at the head of the industrial Y slope for two years, until September 2027. Lily van der Stokker's new text work, specially developed for NDSM, provides a gentle and critical counterbalance to the raw male dominated character of the former shipyard.

The light green text statement Schattige babyvoetjes connects this historic heritage location — once a place of heavy and predominantly male work with themes addressing the private domain, parenting and gender. “I place the domestic on a pedestal,” says Van der Stokker. The chosen words, drawn from the jargon of parenthood, function as a subtle cultural provocation in an environment where graffiti and monumental shipyard heritage set the tone. The work invites visitors to view the public space with fresh eyes.

At The NDSM-wharf— a former shipbuilding site that now functions as a creative incubator in the midst of a rapidly changing urban area — Schattige babyvoetjes symbolizes the encounter between the personal and the public. The work creates a provocative contrast with both the industrial surroundings and the graffiti on the site, thereby making a powerful statement about the visibility of domestic and feminine themes in public space.

Schattige Babyvoetjes was also featured in Het Parool! Read the article here.

About Lily van der Stokker
Lily van der Stokker (1954) is known for her colourful, large wall drawings and paintings about everyday topics like the home, kindness and ageing. With her bright, cheerful colours and light phrases like Dankjewel Lieve Schat and Best Mooi WeerVandaag, she has questioned traditional ideas about art for more than thirty years.

With Schattige babyvoetjes, Van der Stokker aligns with her long-standing artistic practice, in which personal themes—friendship and family, beauty and ugliness, cleaning the kitchen, illness and health—are used as a lens through which broader societal issues are examined. Her work questions gender norms and the assumed naturalness of masculine aesthetics in public space, offering a poetic yet incisive perspective on who and what is allowed to be visible in our streetscape.

Schattige babyvoetjes is made possible by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and the Mondriaan Fonds.

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