DOOR NUMBER 6: who we are…

Part of the 7-Door Art Trail, Ventnor Fringe 2025

Artist: Kathy WilliamsArtist

Introduction

Seven 7ft doors—each attached to cupboard-like wooden frames—were returned to the Isle of Wight after a project in London. These structures were distributed to seven different artists, each invited to adapt a door in line with their own practice. Together, the pieces form the 7-Door Art Trail at the Ventnor Fringe 2025.

Each work was to be site-specific and responsive to place. Artists were encouraged to consider interaction—offering the public moments of engagement, reflection, or play.

Working with Constraint

For the artists, the given format was a creative challenge. The physicality of the doors demanded a response to something pre-existing, fixed, and functional.

Williams chose to respond by interrogating the mechanics of the door itself. She considered how a door transports us into a new space, while a window allows us to see through, gather information, or remain separate. In this interplay, she found her concept.

Intervention and Transformation

Williams cut away the back half of the cupboard structure. The front door remained intact, and now opened onto a framed window. The newly opened back exposed the entire structure to the surrounding environment.

Visitors could open the door, look through the window, and find themselves simultaneously looking out—to the landscape beyond—and in—to the reflective darkness of the cupboard’s interior.

At dusk, UV lighting installed in the roof of the structure illuminated a gestural neon green circle painted onto the window. Inside the circle, hand-painted words read:

“who we are”,

glowing in vivid orange.

At night, the painted circle hovered, suspended in the darkened frame, encouraging passers-by to pause, document, and share.

Voices from Gaza

The back panel, now open and painted in gloss white, became a surface for pasted images—drawings and photographs made by displaced children in Gaza.

Williams had been in contact for several months with Hope and Play, a charity working with children under siege in Gaza. What began as personal despair—her feeling of helplessness in the face of ongoing atrocities—transformed into a direct collaboration. Through the drawings of children, Williams was reminded of our shared humanity.

Hearts, homes, flowers, dreams:

The images the children created, despite war and loss, were filled with the same visual language as any child’s drawing anywhere in the world.

Their inclusion in the artwork was not only a gesture of solidarity—but a call for dialogue. Visitors to the trail were invited to view the drawings, learn about the children who made them, and send their own drawings back in response. A quiet exchange of hope and care.

Door Number 6

This work became known as Door Number 6.

Unexpected Challenges

When installed, the open back of the structure—containing the Gaza drawings and donation details—faced away from the path. Williams had left drawing materials for visitors to use, but weather conditions damaged the paper and pens.

She began to notice a pattern:

From the front, visitors were drawn in. The door, closed and imposing, invited curiosity. When opened, the space inside encouraged interaction and play.

But the back of the structure—the part containing the drawings from Gaza—was largely ignored.

A Difficult Realisation

At first, Williams felt disheartened. But soon she recognised what was playing out mirrored a painful truth.

We are exposed to the horrors of war—videos, images, headlines—and we feel deeply. Then, just as quickly, something else captures our attention. Life carries on. The war remains.

This work had begun to embody that cycle. The front-facing interaction was easy, engaging. But the drawings—made by children now living through famine and ongoing violence—remained unseen.

Williams saw this not as a failure, but as a revelation. The door had become a powerful symbol of how we live with, and sometimes look away from, global suffering. It held a truth that was hard to face.

The Present and the Call

Door Number 6 remains where it is—standing witness to everything that surrounds it. It holds space for empathy, reflection, play, and loss.

It is now separated from its original call to action. The Gaza children’s drawings remain part of the structure, but the invitation to respond—to draw and to send—now exists independently.

Williams now makes this call again, with urgency:

We still need drawings.

Drawings to send back to the children in Gaza.

Messages of hope, connection, and care.

If all we can do is draw—

Let us draw together. Let us do it now.

How You Can Help

• Make a drawing, individually or with your children, friends, or community.
  
  

• Include a message if you wish.
  
  

• Send your drawings to:
  
  kathyred33@outlook.com
  

This is not about politics.

This is about people.

About children.

About the power to give hope and share common humanity.

With thanks to: Hope and Play, Gaza. Ventnor FRinge 2025 and Cut Laser Cut, Sandown….and all the artists who gave their time and work to the project.