Dressed in flags - From Senegal to Italy, via Ghana and the Netherlands

Unknown artist

When my oldest brother and I were around the ages of 6 and 7, our school in Senegal had an International Day event where everyone would bring food from their country and you could also dress up. My mother decided to make my brother and me outfits that represented our multicultural family. You see my mother is from Ghana and my father is Dutch. She decided to make my brother clothes that represented the Ghanaian flag and for me clothes that represented the Dutch flag. She took a picture of us in these clothes right before we went to school. I don’t remember much of the day itself, but I remember that I used to get hold of that photograph and study it a lot. It was a representation of my diverse family. In this photograph, my brother and I are standing in our garden in Senegal right next to each other as the Dutch and Ghanaian flag. My mother captured three different countries in one photograph. When we moved to Italy, it was one of the photographs that I kept the closest to me. Then when we moved to the Netherlands and I went to study at the Royal Art Academy in the Hague, this photograph was an inspiration for a painting that would become part of my art installations around the concept of Home.