The Dutch born, Berlin based artist Renee van Bavel, deals with the themes of peace, humanity, freedom and democracy in her work. Through various art forms, she creates experiences and personal approaches to the themes. With her spatial artwork The Mirror of Peace, she shows this forcefully. The viewers see themselves in full life-size and read the text: “This is what people who live in peace look like” and it inevitably becomes clear that a life in peace cannot be taken for granted and that we have to consciously do something – every day – to preserve it.

In the past 10 years, for my work as a programme maker and song writer, for many different commemorations and ceremonies for various memorials in the Netherlands and Germany, I have always done extensive research and spoken to many people for whom the words war and peace have a living meaning. All these encounters and conversations have made me very aware of the peace in which I grew up and have been living my whole life. this awareness has kindled in me the fire to share this with the western world. Not in a way that I explain it, but in a way that people can experience it themselves in their own way.