Norwegian-Danish artist Nina Maria Kleivan ditched the baby bonnet and rattle and opted for a mustache and swastika for a photograph of her infant daughter. She depicted the baby as Adolf Hitler as part of a photo exhibit on the nature of evil.
“We all have evil within us. Even small children are evil towards each other,” Kleivan tells Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “Even my daughter could end up ruling Denmark with an iron fist. The possibility is still there.”
Kleivan said she was inspired to begin sewing infant-sized costumes soon after the birth of her daughter, who is now 11 years old. She said complications from her pregnancy had left her and the baby sitting at home. Looking at her daughter, she recalled, she considered that each human life begins as a blank slate, with opportunity to do good or evil. Her husband was supportive — until he spotted a tiny swastika armband.
“‘I’m aware that you’re an artist, but this is wrong,’ he told me,” Kleivan recalled him saying. “I’ve pondered that a lot myself: Could I really do this? I agree it’s on the verge, especially Hitler, whom I and most others view as the incarnation of evil. He and Stalin were the hardest to do. It hurt.”
She admitted that it was difficult explaining the work to her Jewish aunt, who lost much of her family in World War II concentration camps and saw the photos at an exhibition in Sweden.
“I felt so bad telling her it was my work, because she didn’t know, and was sickened by it,” Kleivan told Haaretz. “But this is not a deliberate provocation. It calls for reflection. Even though comical, you’re not supposed to only laugh at these pictures. You need to contemplate them, ponder where this evil comes from.”
Crazy. More pics of the baby below:
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