Tag: Nationalism
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Defending Freedom
Defending Freedom While Russia is invading and bombarding its neighbour Ukraine, spreading death and destruction, Ukraine is defending its freedom. At the Venice Biennale the Russian Pavilion is hermetically sealed. Russia is not welcome and is excluded from presenting itself at the exhibition. Ukraine on the other hand is proudly present with its international exhibition…
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Patriotism
I once was seriously lectured by a young boy in India about my alleged lack of patriotism. Everybody in India always wants to know where you come from. Whenever they heard I was Dutch they would often relate to me the story of how a small boy in Holland had saved his country and people…
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Showing of the flag
I was born after the Second World War in a liberated Netherlands. It had just suffered five years of occupation by Nazi Germany. I remember very well the yearly festivities during my childhood of the 5th of May, the day in 1945 that the country was liberated from its occupiers. When I visited Tibet in 1996,…
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Equestrian statues
Statues of national heroes on horseback, I don’t think much of them. Not of the statues, nor of the heroes. They generally make me yawn with boredom, or at best incite me to ridicule. So when I saw this equestrian statue in Vienna, I felt an urge to search for the right angle to make…
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