THE CHILDREN OF GAZA ARE DYING
WHAT.
In the early hours of Monday, August 4, together with Kjartan
Kielberg Øvreås, we placed 30 installations throughout central Oslo.
30 small bodies.
30 dead children.
30 stories.
The installations represent Palestinian children killed in Gaza.
We wanted to bring the conflict closer. Not as statistics on a
screen, not as distant headlines, but as a physical and uncomfortable
presence in the middle of the city.
What is happening in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe of
unfathomable proportions. In September 2025, the UN Independent
International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed
genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, citing, among other acts,
killings, serious physical and mental harm, and the deliberate
infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical
destruction of the group.
But numbers have a strange quality.
They can become so large that they stop meaning anything.
So we chose 30.
Not because 30 matters more than 30,000 or 60,000.
But because 30 is imaginable.
30 children. 30 names. 30 lives that were only beginning to unfold.
The project attempts to do something statistics cannot: give loss a physical form.
WHY.
By using children as both symbol and device, we wanted to offer those
who may still be sitting on the fence – as well as our elected
representatives – a different encounter with the loss and brutality
unfolding in Gaza.
Not more numbers.
Stories.
Not more distance.
Proximity.
We hope that concrete stories can create a different kind of
engagement than statistics alone, and that Norwegian politicians, even
in the face of political and diplomatic considerations, will have the
courage to make choices that send clear signals to Israel.
When children are killed and a population is subjected to killing,
starvation and systematic destruction, perhaps the time for gentle
gestures is over.
Public discourse around genocide is often dominated by candlelight
marches, speeches, statements and demonstrations. These are important
expressions of solidarity, but they often reach people who are already
engaged.
What about everyone else?
What does it take to break through indifference?
What does it take to make something abstract physical?
Perhaps it is not always enough to tell people that something is happening.
Perhaps they need to stumble upon it.
Encounter it on their way to work.
Catch it in the corner of their eye.
Stop.
And ask:
