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.