Live to be born

In run-up to the elections of 2010, some of the political parties focused on the differences instead of similarities between (groups of) people who live in Curacao. Specially the skin color and where someone was born were used as criteria to mark people as being welcome or not to live on the island.

That caused some polarization in our society by then, which is in my opinion not the right direction to develop a nation: at 10-10-’10 Curacao would become a sovereign country in the kingdom of the Netherlands.

To mark this step in the Curaçao history, among other events, the exhibition ‘Antepasado di Futuro’ was organized in the Curaçaosch Museum in December 2010, with work from local artists.

I decided to express my dissatisfaction with this skin color and birth place issue, but in a positive way.

I made a ‘uterus’ with several navel cords which stands for Curaçao with its mixed population.

Around the uterus I made the ‘DNA strings’ of the island.

I just used some different kinds of clay, no pigments or glazes. Firings these clays on different temperatures gives them different colors. They refer of course to the different skin colors of our population.

Mixing these parts together in one work gives a varied and more interesting result than using only one color.

So… I want to embrace our melting pot of different influences, instead of focusing on appearances you didn’t choose.

No need to say that this doesn’t only count for this island…

After this project I made a series of coffee and tea cups, with the same idea. It is called ‘Skin’.