Rini Hurkmans

Rini Hurkman’s installations, videos and sculptures show a great concern for people and how they try to keep going in a world in which injustice, displacement and isolation are more the rule than the exception. Her work is a strong plea for respecting human dignity. For Sonsbeek 2008 she is using the weapons of art to defend an important human value: compassion. For Hurkmans, compassion in the sense of sympathy and humanity is indissolubly bound up with concern for ‘the vulnerable part of life’.

The work consists of a flag and a carpet. The flag is white with an undulating golden yellow bar. This Flag of Compassion is, like every work of art, not bound to an institution or nationality, but can be used everywhere and at every opportunity in order to emphasize the importance of compassion. In Sonsbeek Park it flutters on the big meadow in front of the White Villa.

The carpet measures eight by four metres and consists of hundreds of white vests, shirts and blouses once worn by people and now sewn together by hand. The white carpet will be ceremonially moved to a new spot three times during the exhibition, while the Flag of Compassion will be ritually waved by a flag waver.

The flag is on sale in the Sonsbeek information centres. Part of the proceeds will be going to a charity chosen in consultation with the Dutch Red Cross. The work was carried during the Procession by the Guild of Red Cross Volunteers and Combat Sportsmen and Sportswomen.