Play Around the World

Play Around the World
A sensory exhibition for children and adults

What is play? What do children play around the world? What does it look like where they play? The exhibition Play Around the World tries to answer these questions. Based on art and reportage photographs, Jørgen Leth’s documentary Moments of Play and Hartmut Stockter’s interactive installation The Biodiversity Pinball Machine, the exhibition focuses on play as a common human trait across gender, religion, culture, and class. Children play regardless of where and under what conditions they grow up.

The exhibition presents around 50 photographs in which some of the world’s best photographers have captured playing children from many different countries with their lenses. The photographs give a sense of how children live and play around the world, demonstrating that play is something we all have in common.

These messages are also found in poet and filmmaker Jørgen Leth’s (b. 1937) documentary Moments of Play from 1986, showing children and adults playing around the world – from Bali and Haiti via Spain to Brazil and the United States.

At a number of fun, interactive ‘play stations’, you can try your hand at games from all over the world, meet others around play and get inspired to play new games in the schoolyard, the after-school care, the sports club, the workplace or at home.

For the exhibition, contemporary artist Hartmut Stockter (b. 1973) has created a large pinball machine from recycled materials, The Biodiversity Pinball Machine, that invites both play and reflection on our relationship with nature.

The foundation for the exhibition is the book Children's Games Throughout the World, where art historian and curator at The Kastrupgaard Collection, Louise Banke, through the ‘word-of-mouth method’ has collected more than 40 games and photos of children immersed in play, from widely different places in the world.

The exhibition at Vendsyssel Museum of Art is supported by: Nordea-fonden