This Functional Family

This Functional Family uses the audio guide created for visitors to the historic Sonneveld house in Rotterdam to stage a faux-documentary of the history of the hyper-functional home and its owners, the Sonnevald family. This house, commissioned by the influential and affluent Dutch family in 1929, stands as an archetype of pre-war Dutch functionalism, an early 20th century architectural style that was mostly used for industrial buildings and low-cost housing. In this satirical video, Werthein casts black South American immigrants as members of the Sonneveld family and white actors as the family’s servants, performing their daily routines. This choice calls into question the historical view of modernity as an exclusively European event and the deliberate disregard of colonial and imperial history. In addition, by reversing the roles of black actors as family members and white actors as servants, this work challenges modern views and assumptions about issues of race, class and immigration.