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July 4, 2022
Tienerrrkunstbende ('The Teen Art Gang'): working with kid curators
“I got off to a flying start as an independent artist. I even had an exchange programme with China in the works, which would have been another new kind of adventure! But during the pandemic most things suddenly became either very quiet or stopped entirely. I’m not someone who likes sitting still, so I set out to do what I had had in mind for a while: earning my qualification as an art educator. I began studying at ArtEZ in the Fine Art and Design Education course in Zwolle. Since I already had a Bachelor degree from the AKI, I was able to do a tailor-made version of the Fine Art and Design in Education course. I was able to finish the course in only two years and focus on the didactic aspects of art.”
An exposition made for and by kids
Björn’s work as a curator at Concordia laid the foundation for his interest in art education, but it was also an ideal place to develop his design research. “To graduate from the art education programme, I had to do a project, so I created an exposition alongside teenagers. We were looking for several young people who were on the same wavelength as us creativity-wise: the Tienerrrkunstbende (The Teen Art Gang). With this team of young curators, we came up with a plan to create an exposition on the subject of “Nature & Environment.” The teenagers were given the task of interviewing artists and creating challenges and assignments for visitors to the exhibition. This way, we used expertise directly from the target group itself: the teenagers are the curators of their own exposition.”
Kid's perception of the world
Because this idea was conceived by the Tienerrrkunstbende, teenage visitors to the exhibition can connect better to the exhibition and its new perspectives. Instead of quickly walking past an artwork and looking at it for ten seconds, they are challenged to consider what they have seen for longer. Björn: "Right now, we are working with the Tienerrrkunstbende again on our next exhibition: ‘Lekker lachen is een kunst’ (‘Laughing from your heart is an art’). The central theme for this year's exhibition is humor. The teens, both the curatorial team and the visitors, will consider where the boundaries of humor lie. What really is humor and how do we interact with it? With the teaching license I will recieve after graduation, I would like to continue working in the educational field, instead of just making my own art. Doing that gives me the chance to make my audience think about what they are seeing and introduce them to another perspective.”
A new way of working
At the Academy of Art and Design, Björn mostly works on creating huge installations where nothing is too crazy or far out there. Overstimulation, silliness and the cultivation of nonsense are the starting point for all of his work. “I make use of all the different mediums of expression out there for my installations. Painting, video, QR-codes, flying toilet paper rolls... anything is fair game! When I was studying Fine Art and Design in Education, the rules of the game had to change a bit: I was taking the train from Enschede to Zwolle for my classes, so of course I couldn’t bring a huge installation along with me on the train. Because of that, I picked up painting again. It felt so nice to have a sketchbook with me on the train, taking advantage of the travel constraints to develop myself artistically in that area.”
A different take on life
"In my finals work, I want to show my story of how I look at the world and myself through visual art. Actually, a lot of what we think is really just hot air and that can be put into perspective, hence the title: BLA BLA. In my finals work, you witness a human who becomes aware of the absurdity and finite nature of life with amazement. The technique I used for my paper fresco is not the most exciting thing in the world, though I did develop more in digital painting during the Fine Art and Desigin in Education course. I worked on the first draft while I was on the train, and then I developed the scanned version further by painting digitally. Then I cut out the printed result and pasted it on with wallpaper glue." These new rules of play challenged Björn to work in a nuanced way. "But in the end, whatever my working method is, what I want to achieve doesn't change: to motivate the audience to look at life and the world differently through my art.”
More information about the Tailor-Made course Fine Art and Design in Education
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