Gebroken lijn in honour of Marga Minco - Tamar Frank

The Oranjeplein in Breda has been transformed into Marga Mincoplein. Light artist Tamar Frank created a light and audio artwork for this square. The initiators are the neighbourhood councils of Zandberg-Oost, Zandberg-West, and Ginneken.

Artwork Broken Line in honour of Margo Minco 
The artwork Broken Line by Tamar Frank consists of two red lines cutting through the pavement over the Marga Mincoplein. In the middle, above the viaduct of the ring road, where they almost meet, the lines do not connect but sharply bend upwards 8 metres into the air. Together, the two lines form a light gate that one can walk through. Behind the gate is an intimate space enclosed by greenery, where sound fragments of Marga Minco can be heard, consisting of recited stories and excerpts from radio and television programmes. 

Broken line refers to the abrupt break caused by the Second World War that has shaped Minco's life and writing. The red line is etched into the pavement of her birthplace Breda as a marker of a history that is still palpable as an open wound. The artwork is visible during the day as a red line, and as night falls, it is illuminated from within and becomes increasingly visible as it gets darker.

Marga Minco (Ginneken, 31 March 1920 – Amsterdam, 10 July 2023) was born as Sara Minco in the Prins Hendrikstraat as the third and youngest child of Twente's Salomon Minco and Groningen's Grietje van Hoorn. The close-knit family later moved to various addresses, ultimately living in the Loopschansstraat. Like her older brother and sister, Sara, who by then called herself Selma, became involved in the artistic circles of Breda. David played in a jazz band and studied economics, while Bettie painted and trained as a nurse. After completing Mulo, Selma took a position as a trainee reporter at the Bredasche Courant. Shortly after the German invasion, she became the first journalist in the Netherlands to be dismissed because of her Jewish heritage. In the autumn of 1942, the Minco family was ordered by the occupiers to move to Amsterdam. Her parents, brother, and sister with their spouses were deported and murdered in the extermination camps, as were virtually all their close and extended family. Selma escaped, bleached her dark hair, and survived under the false name Marga at various hiding places. Her Breda friend, the non-Jewish poet and journalist Bert Voeten, joined her. Together with their baby Bettie, they experienced the liberation in Amsterdam, got married, and began their literary (family) life. Marga wrote stories for magazines and debuted in 1957 with Het bittere kruid, which has since seen 68 reprints. Her oeuvre, including A Empty House, The Fall, The Glass Bridge, The Days Left Behind, and the collected story anthology Behind the Wall, has been awarded, among others, the Constantijn Huijgens Prize (2005) and the P.C. Hooft Prize (2019) and is internationally recognised as the Dutch voice in European war literature. Marga Minco's work has been translated into 20 languages.

The Oranjeplein
A dedicated group of Breda residents from the Zandberg-Oost, Zandberg-West, and Ginneken neighbourhoods has been advocating for the so-called Oranjeplein for over a quarter of a century, which until recently was a barren, stony crossing over the Southern Ring Road. The square was dangerous for passers-by, looked desolate, and cut through the Ginnekenweg in such a way that the road sections no longer connected to each other.

In recent years, the neighbourhood councils developed a plan to not only adapt the square but also to honour the writer who was born in the Prins Hendrikstraat by naming the square after her. An artwork on the square would also form a fitting element in the overall design. An art committee was formed, and from a selection of artists, Tamar Frank was chosen. Tamar Frank is an artist who works with light and whose work can be seen all over the world. The commission to the artist was not only that Minco's work should be the basis for the artwork but also that the intersecting Ginnekenweg would be symbolically reconnected through the artwork.

Source reference audio collage