Childhood Undone: Four Contemporary Art Projects with Children

Children’s contemporary culture is a phenomenon of interest to many scholars. While most research focuses on digital media and Web 2.0, fewer studies have examined young people’s engagement with contemporary art as artists and creators. This paper introduces current research on art projects realized through collaborations between children and professional artists. It analyzes five international projects from Denmark, Canada, and the UK in order to make four points about how childhood is currently constituted in post-industrial democratic societies. On the one hand, artistic collaboration illuminates the boundary between childhood and adulthood, but on the other hand, it provides a practical and theoretical mechanism to reconceptualize children’s culture as dynamic, intercultural, and intergenerational.     DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2012.001