Generations
Our readers vary widely in age. We have readers who are not yet twenty years old and readers who are well over eighty. Our youngest readers were born nearly seventy years after our oldest, and the oldest readers in turn were born more than seventy years after the abolition of slavery. The generation in between was born around the time of independence from the colonies in Asia and Africa.
About eighty percent of our readers are artists. And they spread across all generations. With their art they tell stories, including that of their generation. Their art shows - perhaps unintentionally - the time in which it was made and the changes that took place in it.
I was born 100 years after the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles and in the middle of the time that many countries around the world became independent from their colonizers. In the time in which I grew up people talked about 'developing countries', which meant that 'we westerners' could develop the countries that were left behind and their inhabitants to 'our level' with the right help. This included a western education. The rich histories and cultures that had existed for a long time were completely ignored. I still ask myself the question how it is possible that I was not more critical about this during my high school years and the study period that followed.
There is a world to discover, and in the case of art, that is always a gift.
The art we admired and produced in 'the West' was the art we all know, from early Christian art to modernism. Only recently have we come into more structural contact with art whose roots are not (entirely) in Western cultures. More and more often we see a different visual language, which 'we' may have to get used to, for which we do not yet have a frame of reference. There is a world to discover, and in the case of art, that is always a gift.
So we have many young readers. The young generations in the Netherlands - especially in the cities - are very diverse. My hopes are pinned on that generation. I hope that throughout their lives they will carry with them the diversity in which they have grown up and - in the case of our young readers - will express it in the art that they continue to create.
People with many different backgrounds grow up together and build a future together.
The stories they tell are different from the stories once told in schools and universities. The stories they tell with their art make the world that is yet to come and is in the process of coming transparent to older generations, interwoven with a new visual language that is universal and not limited to one dominant culture.
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