The world through children's eyes

The world through children's eyes

Endy M.Bayuni
The Jakarta Post/Oslo

It is said that children are people
But people do not exist without a culture
Children are people who belong to the future
And they have the right to their own culture
Their own art and history

-- The International Museum of Children's Art

Brackish water occupies the bottom half of the canvas. Floating
are trees and tree trunks, cars of different colors and sizes,
and debris.

Drawings of people on rooftops and the upper floor of houses
in the distant background complete the picture of utter havoc. A
still picture but its vivid images and strong colors leave a deep
and lasting impression of the total destruction that the tsunami
left in its trail in Banda Aceh last year.

The drawing is the work of Ria Purnama, born 1991. A
photograph of her in jilbab (Muslim head scarf) is pinned next to
it. A small accompanying note explains that when disaster struck
on Dec. 26, Ria and her family were not home. Just as well. They
survived, but they lost everything, the house and all its
contents.

Ria's work is one of 43 currently on display depicting the
tsunami and its aftermath at the International Museum of
Children's Art in Oslo.

The collection was brought here by the Norwegian Refugee
Council for display to help bring to the Norwegian public, adults
and children, as well as foreign visitors, an awareness of the
tragedy and more specifically, about how children of Aceh see the
tragedy themselves.

The pictures were the winners of a workshop organized in Banda
Aceh in March, or just three months after the disaster. Some of
them convey optimism, but others express pessimism or even
dejection.

Annisa Marlin, a 12-year-old girl from Banda Aceh, draws
inundated land with the sun shining brightly in the background,
and she entitles it Welcome Sunrise.

Suci Maulina, 13, also from Banda Aceh, drew the water
pounding a neighborhood. She calls her work We can do nothing.

One girl even sounds fatalistic, saying in her note she is
willing to sacrifice herself next time around but pleads to God
to send a messenger beforehand to warn of the impending disaster.

There is one theme common to all the paintings and that is the
choice of colors.

"Can someone tell me why they like to use strong, rather than
soft, colors?" Angela Goldin, the general manager of the museum,
asks when a group of Indonesians, including two dignitaries from
Aceh, visited the three-story unassuming blue and white villa.

None of the Indonesians volunteered an answer, each still
absorbing the meaning of the drawings they were looking at.

"The strong colors send a powerful message," Goldin says.
Those who knew little about art like myself nodded in relief
after learning the implication of the different colors used.

On display here since Sept. 20, the paintings will remain in a
basement room of the museum for one more month. The Norwegian
Refugee Council had planned to return them to their rightful
owners, a foundation in Indonesia, but apparently, museums from
other Norwegian towns, had expressed interest in bringing the
paintings there after Oslo.

Besides the exhibition, all the rooms in the museum, from the
basement to the attic, are filled with paintings and ornaments
with one common bond: They are all the work of children.

Goldin says the museum's collection could be as big as 300,000
items (no precise figure is available because it is still making
the database). The museum's walls can only accommodate about a
fifth of the entire collection, leaving the rest stacked up
somewhere in the storeroom.

Besides the permanent collection, the museum holds thematic
exhibitions. In one attic room, there is a display of drawings by
Polish teenagers about drug abuse. Black is the dominant color,
and not unexpectedly, the drawings tend to be gloomy. This
section is a no-zone for children under 12 because of the
psychological impact it might have on them.

A less gloomy exhibition is held on the second floor of the
museum through drawings by top winners of a recent painting
competition for Norwegian children who were asked to draw their
impression of Norway 100 years from now.

Children's imagination can run wild when it knows no bounds.
Who would have predicted 100 years ago about computers, cell
phones, airplane travel, travel to the moon and back, or cable
television and the Internet.

One drawings tells of a clock that will run much faster than
today, a flying car fitted with a rotor, a school airbus
(whatever that means), and a flying mobile phone.

"Norwegian children are materialistic," Goldin said explaining
the recurrent theme among the drawings.

The two winners were both about what future schools would look
like. Their works have been honored by the government in
Norwegian national postal stamps.

Some works by Indonesian children made it into the permanent
collection.

One by 10-year-old Sisylia Octavia Candra depicts a small girl
assisting her mother breast-feeding a baby. Another, of two
colorful cats, is the work of five-year-old Qanita Qamarani.
Their works have been immortalized in postcards which are sold at
the souvenir shop in the basement.

The museum is the brainchild of Rafael and Alla Goldin and to
date is the only international museum of its kind in the world.
While others collect drawings of their own nationalities, the
Oslo museum's collection represents the work of artists in 150
countries.

"Age is not the most important factor where art is concerned,"
Rafael Goldin wrote before he died in 1994.