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"Rehaan : The Sweet Smell of Dreams"

for the world's forgotten children

For all eternity, the world has suffered from wars and conflicts and the ensuing chaos and destruction. When I think upon these wars, a great fear for the future overwhelms me.

I myself was born amid conflict and war. These external influences, in contradiction and violation of the essence of humanity, destroying and infringing upon every human right and the right to live and freedom and peace, strongly influenced my way of thinking.

This situation has reduced our thinking to purely political considerations. These conflicts have tired us out and made us mentally ill: we have become mere puppets, unable to move on our own in any direction. For me, the world has become narrower than the eye of a needle, bereft of any culture or intelligent reflection, whether it be on the page of a newspaper or the page of a book where I search in vain to transcend my condition.

Newspaper headlines or daily reports on tv carry only bad news. They upset me, pushing me towards innocence, the fruit of life, more immaculate than any blank page: children.

This portion of humanity living on our planet - children - are at the heart of my artistic project. Children grow up in a bewildering world, lost among the different strata of our societies. Human rights violations are our daily bread, akin to tv ads. On tv, you can zap from famine in Africa to extreme poverty in Asia to human conflict between people in the Middle East.

I come from a region of intense conflict where people react to the bloodshed by intellectual and political combats. The negative fallout from globalisation and technological warfare provoke similar reactions, as do conflicts over identity and the ownership of space.

The crushing force and magnitude of the instrument of indiscriminate warfare has killed what little remained of the innocence of a child swinging on a seat at the end of a clothesline in front of his home. International law and human rights law are blatantly ignored -- they have no power to protect civilians, especially children, women and the elderly.

In the face of this situation, my idea has evolved and matured. I have been able to find a psychological and emotional leverage in my search to express and denounce this situation in my artistic work.

I strive to awaken the cultural conscience of people in order to create an alternative protection and freedom for the most vulnerable part of humanity -- our children -- from the war machine and its ravages. Children, and especially children born in the midst of poverty and war, often living in camps, have the right to play like every child elsewhere, as we played when we were little. They have a right to live like other children in the world.

When you see children on tv or read about them, many other children are absent from this narrative, forgotten behind the walls of camps or handicapped. Of them, you see only old, damaged photos, pictures of children whose childhood was torn from them by war. There are walls covered with faces from which time has stolen their innocence and their dreams.

Sweeet-smelling dreams: The project presents a group of children from all over the world

The rationale behind this work: This exhibit is a constructive experience which calls upon the reaction of the viewer by means of an artistic video. The exhibit is a resume of the memory of
children deprived of their childhood and their lives. A number of coffins corresponding to the number of the continents on our planet will represent the enormity of the injustice and oppression of the situation of these forgotten child victims, truly dead to the world.

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