Nieuwe Celebrities
During the 2026 World Cup, ordinary public spaces became sites of shared celebration among complete strangers, bound not by who they are but by what they hold in common. Palestinian solidarity moved through these gatherings in the voices of players and supporters alike, from Morocco and Egypt to Spain, Ireland and Chile.
That same year, as the United States and Israel waged war on Iran, Iranian forces deployed inflatable jets, tanks and missile launchers. Built to be mistaken for the real thing, they drew expensive fire onto rubber and air. A decoy protects through visibility: it shields what is real by drawing the eye elsewhere.
Nieuw Celebrities turns this logic toward children. Palestinian children are among the most targeted in the world, subjected to military strikes with the goal of ethnic cleansing. The work renders two boys who live in Palestine and love football as larger-than-life inflatable sculptures: Uday Zboun, 12, from Bethlehem, and Karam Abdalqader Suleiman, 8, from Dura, Hebron. A military decoy stands in for a weapon. These stand in for children, symbolically drawing fire away from boys who are still alive and striving to play.
The boys growing up in Amsterdam Nieuw-West and the boys growing up in Palestine could, at first glance, be mistaken for one another, sharing the same desire for football as a space of freedom and play. Dutch children are among the happiest in the world, and what separates them from Uday and Karam is only the reality into which they were born.
The title follows the root of the word celebration: an assembly of honour of someone or something. My practice revolves around this idea. Celebrity, in turn, means being known, seen and held in regard. For Palestinian children, being seen has become a danger. Nieuw Celebrities attempts to make visibility an honour again, granted not for fame or spectacle but for the simple, sufficient act of wanting to play. The mundane becomes monumental.
The work opened on 19 July 2026, the evening of the World Cup Final, at the Van Eesteren Museum in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, with a new orchestral set composed in collaboration with the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra. Over the following month, the two boys travelled to De Natuurkamer and Ru Paré, appearing among the children they so closely resemble.
Funded by AFK & Nieuwe West Gemeente
Photos by: Sophie Leyendecker, Merel Daantje, and Davide Sartori
2026