This four meter high bronze statue of a teenager with his hands in his pockets was unveiled in the forecourt of Rotterdam train station in early June. It quickly became a real attraction… and a topic of discussion.
Aside from being made of bronze and standing nearly four meters tall, it’s clearly outside the standards one would imagine for monumental statues in the city. The work is called Moments Contained, Moments Kept, and has just been inaugurated in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the forecourt of Central Station, the city’s busiest spot, with thousands of travelers passing by every day.
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It depicts a teenager, a young black girl dressed like many teenagers today, which is a tracksuit, sneakers, a t-shirt, her hair tied in a bun, standing and her hands in her pockets. She looks straight ahead without actually smiling, all in a hyper-realistic style that gives the impression that she’s posing specifically to be photographed.
It was British sculptor Thomas J. Price who created it. He specializes in depicting those who are not seen in monumental art: precarious workers, the poor, immigrants, young people… The Dutch philanthropic foundation Droom, presented at Art Basel last year, acquired this statue to them to be donated to the city of Rotterdam, a donation which the mayor accepted and decided to expressly place them in the liveliest square of this port city. To say it gets people talking is an understatement.
Who has the right to a statue?
On the one hand there are the conservatives, who insist that only people who have achieved something should be entitled to a monument. On the other hand, there are reformists who advocate that not only monarchs, military leaders, politicians or generally naked allegories of women be represented in public space. And finally there are the thousands of anonymous people who pose for their picture with the statue.
Since its inauguration three weeks ago, it has been the most photographed, commented on and discussed monument in Rotterdam, a city that wants to be cosmopolitan and open while at the same time carrying the past of an old city of the old continent. Both a famous haven for Protestants and a former major slave port. And that’s why the statue gets people talking, because it challenges our idea of a monument: what do we want to represent? What do we want to show about a place, an epoch? And to say what exactly?
The answer undoubtedly lies in all the anonymous figures, from Van Gogh’s Peasant Woman to Vermeer’s Milkmaid to Rembrandt’s Lady with a Fan, who, one could accuse of having done nothing special, yet illuminate all the museums of the world today.