Artists explore childhood as political subject in recent works by McQueen, Baudelaire, Karikis and Dreyfus

In 2019, Steve McQueen's Year 3 initiative captured the images of 76,000 schoolchildren from London, with their portraits displayed at Tate Britain and on billboards throughout the city to emphasize shared responsibility. Éric Baudelaire's Un film dramatique (2019) featured Parisian middle-schoolers over a four-year span, earning the Prix Marcel Duchamp and being showcased at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Mikhail Karikis's No Ordinary Protest (2018), inspired by Ted Hughes's The Iron Woman, tackled environmental themes and received a nomination for a Jarman Award. Smadar Dreyfus's School (2009–11) utilized audio from Israeli classrooms at the Folkestone Triennial to investigate how education shapes subjectivity. These artists regard children as political entities, involving them in critical societal conversations about inheritance, crisis, and the future.