Art and activism
The Power of Art in Activism
Art has always been a powerful tool to express ideas, challenge norms, and inspire change. When paired with activism, it becomes more than just creative expression, it becomes a call to action.
Why I mostly Focus on the Environment?
The health of our planet is at a tipping point, a changing climate, deforestation, pollution, and the loss of biodiversity are not distant problems, they affect us all. Environmental issues threaten food systems, clean water access, and the stability of life on Earth. Addressing them requires not only science and policy, but also public awareness and cultural engagement. This is where in my opinion art becomes essential.
It’s not only the environment, environmental and Human Rights Are Connected
The fight for the environment is also a fight for human rights. Environmental degradation often hits the most vulnerable communities hardest, those who contribute least to climate change often suffer its worst effects. Access to clean air, water, and safe living conditions are basic human rights, and when they are threatened by pollution, deforestation, or resource exploitation, justice is at stake.
The Importance of Advocating for Change
Advocacy is about standing up and speaking out. Without collective voices pushing for change, environmental and human rights issues can be ignored or downplayed. By combining creativity with activism, artists give people a powerful, accessible way to understand environmental challenges, injustice and inequality to imagine a better future.
Advocacy through art helps build movements, influence policy, and inspire individuals to act.
Art and activism, for me its a symbiotic relationship to highlight inequalities and urgent challenges we face, not as a means of persuasion, but as a way to create space for reflection.
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“The weight we carry is what we leave behind”
“The weight we carry is what we leave behind”
Friday April 18, 2025 Amsterdam
A silent procession trough Amsterdam
Plastic, the new weight that we and the coming generations carry with us.
Today, plastics are found not only in our environment, but also in human blood, brain tissue, and breast milk. This illustrates the deep and far-reaching impact of plastic what is one of the biggest environmental problems worldwide for now and coming generations.
The 3 meter high cross carried throughout the prosession is constructed from plastic litter, collected along the IJ river in Amsterdam and a small toy pony, an object that has come to symbolize the environmental impact of the 2019 MSC Zoë container ship disaster. One of the containers lost in that incident released thousands of these plastic ponies, which subsequently washed ashore on the northern Dutch islands.
The cross serves as both a physical burden and a visual metaphor for collective responsibility and legacy.
By staging this work on Good Friday, a day traditionally associated with reflection and remembrance, I invited the public to consider the long-term ecological consequences of human consumption and the legacy we leave for future generations.
This performance is not a protest, nor a sermon, but rather “a testimony without words, a procession of consequence.” Viewers where welcome to join the walk and engage in personal reflection throughout the route
“The elephant in the room” (the lack of sense of necessity)
Museum Arnhem, June 22 until July 14, 2024
A, 20 day art performance, turning 7.705 pages (printed on colourful paper) of the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) working groups I, II and III reports of the sixth assessment cycle and the Synthesis Report, into confetti as an example of the lack of sense of necessity.
Description of the performance:
I use a two-holes hole puncher / paper puncher.
I sit for almost 6 hours daily (the opening times of the museum) at a table, repeating the same movement of hole punching.
I walk into the room in silence just after opening of the museum and I leave in silence just before closing time.
I do this 6 days a week (the opening days of the museum Tuesday to Sunday), for 20 days from June 22 until July 14 - 2024.
During the hours of the performance I don’t speak.
During the hours of the performance I don’t eat, I only drink water.
During the hours of the performance the only intermission I allow myself is going to the toilet; I stay silent.
On day 20 I leave the table in silence, the confetti will remain for about two weeks.
After that I come back and clean in silence.
This performance, a stark reminder of how we continue to ignore the pressing reality of the changing climate, the loss of biodiversity and the impact of pollution.
Media:
The Guardian Altreconomia
Inspiration: performance
Spring 2022.
Blossom, the spring confetti, drifting like snow through the streets.
The sense of joy, spring dispelling the gray skies, where this winter seemed like an everlasting autumn.
The winters are getting milder, the summers with more extremes, drought, floodings, wildfires.
There is a party on the corner of the street, I remember the fuss in February about whether carnival could continue because of the pandemic (Covid19), if there were no more important things at stake.
My thoughts melted my sense of joy, the new IPCC reports made a fresh new memory, showing the lack of sense of necessity.
The performance is about labor, sacrifice, and dedication, It’s the time span which gives the performance its strength and significance along with the immense monotony repeating movement of what I do over those 20 days
The physically and mentally exhausting performance underscores the endurance and devotion needed to create change.
The wooden table and chair are deliberately chosen as crucial elements of the performance, a chair with no ergonomic value, knowing it will cause pain..
The confetti purely symbolizes festivity to evoke a mindset, the contrast between the cheerful confetti until they read the accompanying text what is an important part of the performance where every detail was meticulously planned even the overall I did wear.
Maybe it was all a waste of time.
TreehouseNDSM Amsterdam November 11, 2024
20 days at Museum Arnhem (summer 2024). Painstakingly transforming the 7,705 pages of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report printed on coloured paper using a two-hole page puncher turning the reports into a heap of colorful confetti. Sitting in the same position a repeating the same movement for hours each day in silence.
In light of political developments, including the election of Donald Trump as the new President of the United States and his expressed intention to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, concerns about the environment about the changing climate are growing.
With this in mind I decided to do a follow up from my performance the elephant in the room on Monday November 11-2024, a date coinciding with the opening of the global climate conference in Azerbaijan and the traditional kickoff of Dutch Carnival.
using fire as a symbolic irreversible act that underscores society’s collective failure to act.
On this date I did set alight the confetti created from the IPCC climate reports during my performance presented at Museum Arnhem in the Sumer of 2024.
20 days of dedication will be gone in minutes..
The act of burning this confetti marks the culmination of my message: “By burning the confetti, each piece representing fragmented, neglected knowledge transforms into ash, I am enacting what it feels like to watch essential climate knowledge, and with it our future, slip away in an instant, we treat the science as disposable when it should be an urgent call to act.
This burning is a reminder of the urgency and the lives and ecosystems at stake. The flames symbolize not only the loss of biodiversity and climate stability but the missed opportunities for intervention that resonates deeply as an emotional and political protest.