Indifference

"Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death."

Elie Wiesel (US News & World Report - 27 October 1986)

I started this painting when trying to participate to a Brussels-based art competition. The theme was “border”, but it was eventually cancelled as it didn't attract enough contestants. I resubmitted it to another art competition, organized by the City of Brussels which I won the second prize of in 1996. The painting is based on a photograph I took years before, showing a scene of arguing passer-by. I was intrigued, even more when I developed the picture (it was before digital age) to realize there was somebody lying on the ground, holding his head!

City of Brussels' second prize in 1996

I called my painting “Indifference”. It contains several “hints”. Pay attention to the car poster on the wall behind the crowd. Pay attention to the “red man” traffic light… 

I decided to dedicate it to my friends Erica Duggan and Molly Kronberg who are confronting a similar wall of indifference in their respective personal tragedies. Both have lost loved ones because of the same “LaRouche organization”, an international destructive “political” cult which I was once associated with. Both face indifference. I am supporting their struggle for justice both publicly and privately and in doing so, warning the world of what such a cult could do to individuals and therefore to society, in hope it won't happen ever again.

I am aware that by revealing some of my past I take the risk of being stigmatized. I will here paraphrase: "Let s/he who never made mistakes, cast the first stone." 

Monday, 1 July 2013
© Yves Messer

Here is my paper ARE YOU INDIFFERENT TO “INDIFFERENCE?