More than five years after graduating from Academie Minerva, Sanne Boekel (Groningen, 1995) her work is already in the Groninger Museum. In her installation at the Children’s Biennale, she uses gamification to start conversations about emotions and difficult subjects.
“I often see my work as social design approached from an illustration perspective. My project for the Children’s Biennale consists of an interactive installation about recognizing emotions and facilitating a conversation about how we can make ourselves a better place. In addition to my involvement in the Children’s Biennale as an artist, I create educational material and teaching packages for the Groninger Museum. I also receive a lot of input from such educational projects and I stay sharp as a creator.
Visually, my work looks propagandistic
For me, education is the purest form of activism, because I am closely involved in the development of the future generation and thus help shape it. Visually, my work looks propagandistic, but it does not propagate an ideal or idea about how things should be. It facilitates a conversation and invites you to reflect on what you are feeling now. My work uses gamification, where I explore vulnerable topics and invite people to think about their relationship to these themes. Involving children in the Children's Biennale offers a unique opportunity to think from their perspective and find a suitable form. I create educational materials, such as lesson plans and games with a role for gamification, with which I use an accessible approach. The aim is to stimulate children to think about emotions and to make difficult topics discussable in a playful way.”
Sanne Boekel's installation VOEL can be seen (and felt ;-) in the Groninger Museum until 3 November 2024, where it is part of the Children's Biennale.
Text: Dinnis van Dijken
Photo: Christopher Smith
This article previously appeared in KUNST. magazine #2.