Happy Bird Day

Willem Lenssinck

The reason for creating this sculpture was that Willem saw a bronze statue in front of a church in Harmelen – Utrecht. It was a typical Anne Frank statue of a girl with a bird on her hand. The Catholic 1960s sentimentality dripped from it. The funny thing was: Willem didn't know that the statue was made by his great role model: Pieter d'Hont. Yet he thought: 'I'm going to make a variant, and one so bad that it shocks'. An obese girl with pitiful little legs. It was so out of shape that he put it in a self-invented modern wheelchair. A nasty bird stands on her little hands, with the bird's beak threateningly close to the only thing left. The girl's eye comes from the Bartimeus Institute for the Blind. There was a blind girl there who received artificial eyes. Those eyes were uncomfortable, and the girl started sucking and biting on the eyes. Sometimes she even swallowed the eyes. At one point, there were so many bite marks on it that the eye was no longer usable. Willem saw it lying in a drawer at Bartimeus and asked if he could have it. He needed the eye for the sculpture. Another bizarre detail: Six months later, he sees the Rotterdam инвалид marathon, and what does he see? The para-athletes all have the same shape of wheelchair as the girl's cart!

110 x 240 cm

polyester, stainless steel and bronze

1989

1

Not for sale