When wandering the streets of Amsterdam, The Hague, Ghent and more and more other cities, don’t be surprised to encounter one of thousands miniature refugees, part of the ever expanding guerrilla street art project Moving People.
Moving People is a street art project by Dutch artistic collective Power of Art House around the individual stories of refugees. ‘We want to give these stories, these people, these refugees a human face,’ the initiators say. ‘By telling their stories and opening eyes. Making connections and showing people a different way of looking at refugees. Encouraging empathy and strengthening social cohesion.’
3D scanned portraits
For the project ten miniature statues were made representing real people and their moving stories. The ten refugees who shared their story posed for a 3D scanner in positions to reflect their memories and feelings. 3D scans and subsequent prints were made resulting in small figures of approximately 11 cm. With these figures, we started to make silicone molds.
Subsequently all the 10.010 handmade figures were produced and painted with environmentally friendly materials, in collaboration with a local sheltered workplace in Amsterdam, Pantar.
Equipped with a sticker directing to the Moving People website the little figures were dispersed over Amsterdam and The Hague on park benches, at stations, at traffic lights, along the canals, in the zoo, in front of various ministries….they popped up everywhere! Since then the little statues are picked up and replaced by people who are touched by the stories they found on the website and they want to share with other people.
On the Chinese Wall
‘By now we get requests from all over the world to develop this project further, including from Canada, Kentucky, New York, Prague,’ says Saskia Stolz of Power of Art House. ‘You can follow the project Twitter and Instagram too, using #MovingPeople. The figures are traveling all over the globe right now. We’ve seen them in The White House, on the Chinese Wall, in refugee camps. We’re currently working in Ghent on assignment of the municipality to continue the project there with refugees residing in Ghent. This month I’m travelling to the USA where I will be giving lectures on the project at Yale University, Harvard University en Columbia University.’