DISTANT SUFFERING LVVI
hans overvliet i.d. of a treacherous sky
DISTANT SUFFERING LVVI
Hans Overvliet
e-mail: curiositas@zeelandnet.nl
website: www.hansovervliet.com
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hans.overvliet
studio address:
art workshop KipVis
Dreesstraat 2 4384 DC Vlissingen
preface | context We have the art of not succumbing to the truth Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 - 1900
DISTANT
SUFFERING LVVI | i.d. of treacherous skies is inspired by two poems by the Palestinian poets Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) and Refaat Alareer (1979–2023). Two poets who share a common fate: both were murdered by the Israeli Zionist apartheid regime. Ghassan's poem can be found here; Refaat’s you’ll find after images of the art work.
I wish children didn’t die. I wish they would be temporary elevated to the skies until the war ends.
Then they would turn home safe, and when their parents would ask them, where were you? The would say, we were playing in the clouds.
Children are always caught in the middle in the wars that adults wage to “defend” their economic and political interIests. Always without being asked. Children are forced to say goodbye to their brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, their grandparents, cousins, and their friends. Forced to say goodbye to the
safety of their home, garden, their bedroom, their stuffed animals. Often they have to do the most terrible thing you can imagine: say goodbye to their parents and be made into an orphan. They are terrified, traumatized, injured, they lose limbs and are left scarred and disabled for life. Children have no say in any of this. At best, they serve as illustrations for a report, a statistic, a documentary, or a plea.
The DISTANT SUFFERING series began in 2014 with a number of explosions/clouds: DISTANT SUFFERING I | syrian skies 1,000 days - 2014. Now, in January 2026, unfortunately children are still caught up in genocidal violence in countries such as Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, etc., etc.
In 2018, together with a number of concerned colleagues from around the world, I set up a project about the kite to commemorate the world record for kite flying in Gaza. On July 28, 2011, more than six thousand Palestinian children gathered on the beach in Gaza City to break the world record for kite flying. The event was organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The record—12,350 kites—still stands. Here you can find the results, and here you can read what it caused on the other side. The project was also described in the book “The Kiting Dutchman.”*
In 2024, with the help of Leni van den Berge, I created a leporello for an exhibition at ‘de Roofprint Pers’ in Middelburg. I used its basic material to resume the form of the kite in order to juxtapose the image of the child playing in and under life-threatening skies. In the West, we have enacted numerous laws since 1948 to protect children from (war) violence. The argument as to why ‘we’ do not enforce those laws is not only a mystery to me, but also reveals ‘our’ moral and political bankruptcy, because: The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. **
* (Dutch) The Kiting Dutchman, a cultural history of the Dutch kite imagination from 1600 by Gert-Jan Johannes and Inger Leemans. Prometheus Amsterdam Publishers, 2020, ISBN 978 446 463 9, pages 140-141.
**James Baldwin | in The Nation (the November 1, 1980 issue)
Work
DISTANT SUFFERING LVVI | i.d. of a treacherous sky
9 kites, bamboo sticks Ø4-4.5 mm, upright ±55 cm, cross bar ±40 cm, attached to the upright on ±17 cm; Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, December 2025;
9 A3 black-and-white prints of clouds / explosions the Netherlands / Gaza; Tesa flexible masking tape, beige, 20 mm; Ledent braided rope white polyamide, Ø3 mm; Albert Heijn water-based craft glue; Bison wood glue; GAMMA interior paint, white, matt; Bieme double-sided, acid-free adhesive tape, 20 mm; Foamboard, 5 mm; Velcro fastener.
studio | 19/01/’26
If I must die by Refaat Alareer | (1979 - 2023)
If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself–
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale
Thanks to
Willy van Houtum | Giel Louws
Poetry
Ghassan Kanafani (1936 – 1972)
Refaat Alareer (1979 – 2023)
The National, Conversation 16 (2010)
Music:
Metamorphosis | Philip Glass
Branka Parlic, piano
Glassworks | Philip Glass
Philip Glass Ensemble
DISTANT SUFFERING | the project
Martha Jager, curator Vleeshal in MiddelburgNL about the oeuvre (2023) after a studio visit:
The dedication to art as a relational verb is central to Overvliet's work. On the one hand, the balance between poetry and criticism is special, in that the work never becomes bitter or pedantic, while at the same time the dialogue with the viewer is actively maintained.
Hans’ arwork is a tender form of activism that moves and urges action and also continuously questions the role of art.
www.hansovervliet.com click here for my condensed portfolio
