SEEN IN · 01 · MAY 2026
the Netherlands · Cylindrical LED screen, shopping centre atrium
Painting: Expensive Freedom

Rotterdam's motto is Sterker door strijd, stronger through struggle. The city was bombed flat in 1940 and rebuilt from almost nothing.

South Africa's story has been tangled with the Dutch since 1652, when the Dutch East India Company set up its station at the Cape. Here, above a busy shopping floor, a painting about the price of freedom looks down on people spending.

SEEN IN · 03 · MAY 2026
India · Times OOH screens, Chennai International Airport arrivals
Painting: Expensive Freedom

The screens hang over the baggage carousels and the arrivals pickup. Everyone who sees them has just landed.

In 1860 the first ship of indentured labourers sailed from Madras, today's Chennai, to Natal. Decades later Gandhi shaped his ideas of non-violent resistance in South Africa. Freedom has been travelling between these two coastlines for more than 160 years.

SEEN IN · 05 · 2026
Wall-mounted screen on an old pink façade
Painting: A Precious Object

A Precious Object, from the 2024 exhibition At the End of the Rainbow at 99 Loop, shows a woman holding a rose: bud, bloom, fall, a life changing shape and passing faster than we expect.

It hangs on a wall with a raw brick scar where a neighbouring building once stood. The painting and the façade say the same thing. Every moment is precious because it passes.

SEEN IN · 07 · MAY 2026
Indonesia · Outdoor LED billboard, Jalan Melawai, Blok M
Painting: Expensive Freedom

Rain on the road, a red light, and beside the painting a money changer's sign. A painting called Expensive Freedom next to a board selling exchange rates.

The company that ran Java from Batavia also founded Cape Town. In 1694 the Dutch exiled Sheikh Yusuf from the archipelago to the Cape, and many Cape Malay families trace their roots to that history. The painting came back along a road more than 300 years old.

SEEN IN · 09 · SEPTEMBER 2026
Jordan · Roadside screen beside the Le Royal tower
Painting: Music for the Blind

Music for the Blind is about relief. If you cannot see, music does not just play, it fills everything. Peace you have waited a long time for arrives the same way.

Jordan has sheltered people fleeing war for decades, and relative to its size hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Filmed from golden hour into night, the painting grows louder as the light goes.

SEEN IN · 02 · MAY 2026
Germany · Ströer Infoscreens, S-Bahn North-South line
Painting: Expensive Freedom Photo: Emely Timm

While the Wall stood, stations on this line lay sealed under East Berlin, and trains from the West passed through without stopping. Berliners called them ghost stations.

The Wall fell in November 1989. Three months later Nelson Mandela walked free. A face with a hand over its mouth, on a line that kept its silence for 28 years.

SEEN IN · 04 · MAY 2026
Italy · Two street screens near Piazza Castello
Painting: Expensive Freedom

Every 25 April, Italy marks Liberation Day, remembering the 1945 uprising in Milan that ended two decades of fascism and occupation.

It is a country that still debates what its freedom cost and who paid for it. South Africans know that conversation well.

SEEN IN · 06 · MAY 2026
Bauer Media Outdoor, station and street screens
Painting: Expensive Freedom

Belgium is home to Artcrush. It is also a country still facing its colonial past in Congo, from King Leopold II's rule to the murder of Patrice Lumumba months after independence in 1960.

Under a stream of commuters in a Belgian station, a painting about freedom bought at a terrible price sits quietly. It does not need to shout.

SEEN IN · 08 · SEPTEMBER 2026
Romania · Street screens, Bulevardul Regina Elisabeta
Painting: A Moment in the Sun

A Moment in the Sun shows a woman whose mind is racing through the past and the future while the present slips by.

A few minutes away is University Square, where people stood against the Ceaușescu regime in December 1989. They fought for a future where an ordinary sunny afternoon would be enough.

SEEN IN · 10 · SEPTEMBER 2026
USA · Taxi-roof screens, Times Square theatre district
Painting: Expensive Freedom Photo: Dave Krugman

In June 1990, four months after his release, Nelson Mandela rode through Manhattan in a ticker-tape parade. The city had been a centre of the divestment campaign against apartheid.

Thirty-six years later a painting about the cost of that freedom rides through the same streets on the roofs of yellow cabs. Between loops, the screens show one word: SKUBALISTO.