Wide Wide Scissors

100 x 80

Acrylic on canvas

2022

"The rich who owns yachts and palaces and gets richer and richer versus the poor who lives with the bare minimum and gets poorer and poorer... and between them a giant wide-opening pair of scissors. Our system is set up in such a way that the poorest half of the global population owns only about 2 % of the world's wealth; on the contrary, the richest 10 % of the world's population owns 76 % of the total.* Even in the case of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this system is always reset so that the rich continue to get richer – and even more significantly richer – while the poor, on the contrary, continue in their impoverishment, misery and premature dying. The calls of many international communities, non-profit and humanitarian organizations or individuals do not help. Such inequality is a form of economic violence that governments perpetrate on their citizens by adopting policies that suit the most powerful and richest people.

The only way to end the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is to impose significantly higher taxation on the wealthy, end racist neo-imperialism and sexist patriarchy, and introduce unconditional income for all people so that everyone can live the dignified life we all are entitled to. Because the giant scissors dangerously open further and there are two options left – either we use our defiance to close them or they open completely to their last edge.

The work is part of the “Let's Start A Revolution” series.

* World Inequality Report 2022