The exhibition organizers promised me an Aboriginal model, who would walk around in my veil, made of chicken feet, during the press conference at the APT3. I had never met the model, Rodney, and when I arrived he was already wearing the veil. He was surprised to see a white person representing Indonesia and when we started to whisper, because the press conference had already started, he whispered through the veil and I only could see his dark eyes surrounded by all the chicken feet. Hearing my Dutch accent he suddenly started to speak Dutch to me, a big suprise! We exchanged information about where we were born, where we grew up and where we lived now. Rodney turned out to be an Aboriginal from the stolen generation; a generation of indigenous children that were taken away from their parents, to grow up in a 'white' family. I already knew about this stolen generation, because I was in Australia when it was hot news on the television at that time. The Prime Minister didn't want to apologize for what had happened and he was getting a lot of protests. Rodney grew up in a Dutch immigrant family, who moved back to the Netherlands when he was eleven. As an adult, he decided to go back to Arnhemland searching for his indigenous background. Isn't it a moment of exchange like this that I had made the artwork for?
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