IT WAS NEVER PERSONAL

Jacolijn Verhoef

 

In discussions about racism, discrimination and exclusion of ethnic minorities, people of Asian descent are rarely mentioned, let alone their voices heard in those discussions. It is therefore good that the media now reports about Asians who are being discriminated during the COVID-19 pandemic. This hate against Asians was there long before this pandemic, but now people apparently feel justified to express these emotions, which Tanis himself also experienced recently.

 

As a baby Aram Tanis came to the Netherlands and grew up with his adoptive parents. He grew up in a white neighborhood and went to white schools. His Asian appearance was always different from that of his parents, family, classmates and the people he saw on TV. Tanis knows what it's like to be discriminated against because he is not white. As a teen he went consciously looking for people with whom he could identify, but there weren't any role models who looked like him. He has always been very aware of being different.

 

For It Was Never Personal Tanis photographed torn, mouldy and discarded advertisement posters, that still have elements of this ideal of beauty companies wanted to sell, but at the same time they show the decay, the dirty and the ugly of reality. Now during the corona crisis, the posters are no longer replaced in a number of places, so the decay goes further than usual.