ARTIST’S STRATEGIES AS INSPIRATION

Villa Zebra is an art educational museum in Rotterdam. The exhibitions connect to the perception of children through an accessible theme. Artists are regularly commissioned to create a new work, often in collaboration with children.

Villa Zebra has been providing a workplace for a diversity of artists in the exhibition space for years. Preferably they get the key, they can be there whenever they want. It is important that they need an audience, children, to come up with new work.

The artist Hillegon Brunt mentioned in the example has worked seven times a week in Villa Zebra during a year. She was part of the exhibition Ticket to the Future. In it, children aged 7-12 explored in interaction with ten works of art how they can and want to live in the future.

Every week, in conversation and in collaboration with children, Brunt developed a question of what people would look like if they lived: in the dark, as part of nature, always in the sun or the light, in the air, living under water or as mini version. Or if humanity becomes one species that can create family trees.

She always chose a different starting point on which children could continue drawing. E.g. a line, a photo of an object that inspires her (for example, a twig) or part of a cutting. Her way of working, collage-like with different layers of photography and drawing, offers multiple possibilities.