The big issues of war and peace often remain abstract. The strong media presence of crises and wars often makes many people even less willing to deal with these topics.
With her artistic practice, the artist Renee van Bavel knows how to appeal to people’s feelings and bring them back to thinking emotionally about war and peace and to focus on what unites them – the desire for peace.
For the past year, she has been collecting commemorative ribbons from all over the world and sewing them together to create a large, unifying and colorful work of art: “I am sewing and collecting while President Volodymyr Selenskyj is talking to Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, just two kilometers away from me, about new arms deliveries to Ukraine. I sew while Donald Trump comes to power. While the AfD becomes the second largest party in Germany. I sew while the Middle East burns. I am sewing to show what unites us at a time when so much divides us.”
May 8 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. At the same time, numerous armed conflicts and wars are taking place around the world. There are discussions about the reintroduction of compulsory military service and the danger of Russia attacking other countries.
In the Späti, the artist talked to Prof. Dr. Axel Drecoll, Director of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, about her time as Artist in Residence at the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück memorials, making connections and her commitment to peace. The artist will be on site again on 9 May, sewing the commemorative ribbons in the foyer.
In her work, the Berlin-based Dutch artist Renee van Bavel deals with the themes of peace, humanity, freedom and democracy. By using various art forms, she initiates ways to approach and experience these topics at a personal level, as is emphatically shown in her space-encompassing work of art THE MIRROR OF PEACE. The viewers see themselves reflected in full size and read a text saying: “This is what people living in peace look like.” It becomes instantly clear that a life lived in peace cannot be taken for granted, and that we must act consciously—every day—to preserve this peace.