Amsterdam is known as a city of freedom. Yet behind this contemporary image lies a history of persecution. The Inhabitants of the Secret Chambers highlights the men who were imprisoned in the eighteenth century on charges of sodomy. A history that largely unfolded in the shadows, and whose traces have only recently been recognised as part of queer heritage.

Between 1730 and 1810, hundreds of men were prosecuted in Amsterdam on suspicion of sodomy. At the time, it was considered a crime against public order and morality. Many disappeared into the secret chambers of the Rasphuis, inaccessible basement cells where the city literally concealed its so-called immoral inhabitants. The aim was oblivion. Not rehabilitation, but loneliness and isolation.

In this exhibition, Gonçalves presents fictional portraits of three men who were sentenced to life imprisonment on the same day in November 1764: Johanis Wisser, Barend Jansen and Jan Rikke. Their faces are partly visible, partly crossed out. The cross over their eyes and mouths symbolises their social death. Together they form an anonymous monument to the many who were denied a grave or remembrance.

The Inhabitants of the Secret Chambers is not a reconstruction, but an artistic act of remembrance. Régis asks us to look at those we were not meant to see, and to listen to voices that were once silenced. In dialogue with historical research, including the work of Maarten Hell, a powerful visual archive emerges of queer histories that were long kept out of sight.