#havesafesex
2019
Collage on paper. Size: 42 x 34 cm.
When you see the work at first glance it’s quite self-explanatory. There are four dictators, from left to right: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong, wrapped in condoms. With underneath the image, the written text, and, the title of the work: ‘#havesafesex.’
If you could go back in time, would you have killed Hitler (or keep his mother from conceiving him)? That questions is, and will always be, impossible to answer. It’s what we call a perfect example of a time paradox.
What would that mean for our future? If Hitler wouldn’t have seen the light of day, would that mean that Nazism wouldn’t have existed? It’s no lie that the conditions in Germany before the war and the anti-semitism that lived among the German people where partly the reason that a man as Hitler could take over control. Could it – hyperbolically speaking be – that without a Hitler, another “Hitler” would have taken his place? And who knows, maybe could have won the war? What would that mean? What could it mean? And do we want to know those answers…
The use of the hashtag in the title is to pay homage to the time we live in. The new generation of girls that are fighting for the feminist agenda on the internet, using social media to reach many: celebrating their sexuality, freedom and rights. #freethenipple, #metoo, #timesup, and to stay close to the work: #havesafesex.