The art of the h3h biennial carries a spiritual charge and possesses depth. As a result, it not only fits well with the environment and its inhabitants, but also interacts with them. The younger generation, the audience of the future, is actively involved in the biennial to learn about contemporary art, the theme of the exhibition, and the heritage of the Holy Triangle. For the third h3h biennial, which took place from 3 June to 16 July 2023, the theme was Faith. The education programme was created by Servaas Roelandse and Darnisha Daniel for h19 in cooperation with the h3h biennial.
Believe in yourself
The education offer for primary and secondary schools in Oosterhout was approached for the h3h biennial from the point of view of ‘believing in yourself’. As a child, adolescent and young adult, you are constantly discovering yourself and developing and shaping your identity. This is a quest that involves trial and error. Also, the perfect world from social media imposes itself on you, which does not make it easy to stay with yourself. Let alone (continue to) believe in yourself. The post-corona effects also complicate things. The judgement of others on who and what you are weighs like a stone on many children and young people and gets in the way of accepting who you really are.
An artist’s quest, then and now, is not much different from the quest children and young people face, namely, ‘Who am I? A relentless but highly effective tool for discovering who you are is The Self-Portrait. And this is not about the faked selfie to show the whole world what a great your life seems to have, but an unpolished and honest representation of yourself: the analogue version of BeReal, with mirror, pen and paper.
The idea
So the starting point was The Self-Portrait as a means to believe in yourself, who you are and how you look. Children and young people were taken into the power of the pure registration of what you see (i.e. yourself). The trained eye of the artist is able to render reality without embellishment like no other. And you don’t have to be good at drawing to do this. As long as what you see remains leading in what comes to canvas, what you do is actually always good. It just required a certain mindset where the aim was to make children and young people aware of this. The motto of this education programme was:
Believing in yourself starts with seeing who you are
Submissions Face Yourself. Left: Sihaam Hussein, right: Amy Jansen
