My 2019 exhibit included, as its central installation, this piece about children's rights. It's made of plastic clothing storage boxes, which I covered in portraits of children, holding signs that state their various answers to the question, What would you like the adults in your life to know and respect about you?
The children who contributed the answers for this sculpture range in age from 5 to 17, and the sculpture is interactive. Visitors to the installation were encouraged to put on white gloves and play with the cubes, rearranging again and again to make a vast assortment of different children.
The installation included a small tray of black paper, where young visitors could write their own answers to the question. I hung these answers around the installation as they appeared.
These are the voices of our children – mostly anonymous children, and therefore everychild. These are the things that all children need us to know. They need us to shed our busy-ness, our righteousness and our preoccupations and hear their voices. And their voices keep coming. Let's be good listeners.
Originally published in October 2019.