As one of our Re:ACTIVATE Aspiring Artists, 11-year old Yzza Batac’s Stand Together was created as part of SCAPE Public Art Season 2020.  

IMAGE: Yzza Batac, Stand Together, 2020. Image courtesy of Yzza Batac and SCAPE Public Art. 

11-year-old Yzza Batac, from Merrin School, responded to the brief of Secrets and Lies with the design of a gigantic periscope decorated with the Black Lives Matter symbol and the New Zealand flag, entitled Stand Together.  

This work has been made as a set of periscopes set at viewing height for both young and old; created with wood, paint and mirrors. She chose to use the periscope as a trope denoting a piece of spy equipment, linked to the idea of exposing secrets and lies. Another layer is that periscopes can play tricks with viewers’ eyes and minds, forcing them to think about what they are actually seeing. (A periscope is an apparatus that is made up of a tube attached to a set of mirrors or prisms, traditionally used in submarine settings where they allow the viewer to see beyond their field of vision.)