Berlin-based Dutch artist Renee van Bavel explores themes of peace, humanity, freedom, and democracy, encouraging viewers to engage with these ideas on a deeply personal level. Her immersive artwork, THE MIRROR OF PEACE, exemplifies this approach. As part of the Global Hearth Summit's featured exhibitions, this piece offers viewers a life-sized reflection of themselves alongside the statement: “This is what people living in peace look like.” The work serves as a powerful reminder not to take peace for granted, urging us to make conscious efforts—every day—to uphold and cherish it.

Previously, THE MIRROR OF PEACE was presented at the 59th Biennale Arte in Venice in 2022 and in 2023 to mark the 375th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in Münster and Osnabrück, Germany. These occasions have reinforced the artwork’s powerful message, engaging audiences across different cultural and historical contexts. One edition of THE MIRROR OF PEACE  can also be found in the garden area of the Draiflessen Collection in Mettingen, North Rhine-Westphalia.

The artist

“Through my work for various memorial sites and commemoration services in Germany and the Netherlands, I have met many people for whom the words ‘war’ and ‘peace’ have a vivid meaning. These encounters have made me very aware that I live in peace and that this should not be taken for granted. This process has ignited in me the need to share this ‘peace consciousness’ with the public. Not by explaining it, but by creating a form that enables people to experience it for themselves. That is THE MIRROR OF PEACE."
— Renee van Bavel

Renee van Bavel and the Draiflessen Collection are delighted to present this engaging and thought-provoking work as part of the Global Hearth Summit’s International Arts Program.

The privately founded Draiflessen Collection, which is open to the public, focuses on subjects that have current relevance for many different people, and operates within liminal zones such as those between tradition and the future, faith and doubt, borders and freedom, reality and fiction.