Children behind Glass

Collection available on KNOWN ORIGIN

Projecting my animation on the walls of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. I keep performing my artistic protest against the inhumane practices in The Netherlands where thousands of children are being separated from their parents. If I manage to sell my artworks, most of the sales will go to families and to the Het Vergeten Kind foundation stepping up against locked facilities for children.

An artistic protest against crippling government control over childhood.

This animated collage series addresses the burning issue of thousands of children being taken away from their parents in The Netherlands, but is devoted to all oppressed and unheard children worldwide.

It’s a very personal project as my own children were born in Amsterdam. We had to leave The Netherlands as a family because of the country’s zero tolerance towards unschooling and self-directed fulfillment.

Some background info: The trending Dutch hashtag #1115kinderen refers to the official stats about the number of children withdrawn from their families upon false accusations of tax fraud for petty sums. In reality, 40 times as many Dutch children live apart from their parents, a shockingly high number for a tiny country. At least two thousand of them are locked up in government institutions, in almost complete isolation. Thousands more families are dealing with out-of-home placement threats: Parents wishing to homeschool or unhappy with the school system, single parents, immigrant parents are all subject to continuous discrimination.

Reports and investigative articles about the unprecedented numbers of children being withdrawn from their families in The Netherlands without any proper research/ truth finding and in violation of basic human rights have been circulating for years. Books and documentaries about this yawning abyss have been distributed among the government officials, but little happens.

This is what philosopher Ivan Illich called “modernized poverty”: government “care” makes individuals so dependable on the state that the state ends up absorbing the last bits of ownership they still might possess (their daily routines, their intimate relationships, their right to procreate). Those who used to be just poor before end up stigmatized and controlled to a dehumanizing degree.

It is unacceptable that children and parents and their basic human need of being together are stepped upon in a rich Western country in the 21st century. All children deserve the right to be with their parents. Hundreds of thousands of euros spent by child protection services on out-of-home placements should be spent on helping the families financially and morally, not on destroying families.

For these animated collages, I have used Dutch Renaissance paintings, my own artwork/generative art and public domain stock photography. The collages are based on Dutch Renaissance art to expose the contrast between what the nation can be proud of and deeply ashamed of. They also exude hope that the new renaissance unleashed in the digital realm today may help these children regain their voices.

The children are portrayed behind a wall of fluid glass, some of their features distorted, only their eyes clearly piercing through the layers of time separating them from their parents’ loving embrace. The parents haven’t had permission to see them, sometimes for years.

The collection currently includes the main animation (a 12 second loop, mp4) and three number portraits (png).