Artist's Statement

Vivien Allender

The Global T(w)eens Project is an ongoing artistic investigation that portrays 11-14 year-olds across the globe. Observing the sensitivities of these subjects through posture, gesture, gaze, attitude and clothing I document this young layer of our society, between childhood and adolescence, from places that may seem different and distant from one another. I have chosen to shoot the subjects on neutral backgrounds, intentionally removing indicators of location. As the inhabitants of an increasingly globalized world the work in this series intends to remove borders. By placing the individual subjects side-by-side, country to country, difficult to identify, it opens the work to a different, more universal interpretation and raises questions for me about individuality vs universality.

So far I have shot over 300 portraits in 25 countries including Australia, Pakistan, Italy, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Colombia, Russia, Guatemala, India and Japan to name some.