David Attenborough: Let’s Rewild The World

Year: 2020 – present
Total participants: ±3.500
Materials: acrylic paint on wood with gold wooden frame
Size: 200 x 125 x 5 cm (78,7 x 49,2 x 1,9 in)
Category: unique
Location: Galerie Dennie Boxem Zwolle
Price: highest bidder (90% of the proceeds will be used to buy farm land and rewild it)

The art project of Dennie Boxem is inspired on Sir David Attenboroughs Netflix film A Life On Our Planet. In the documentary Sir David presents a number of beautiful solutions that can truly improve our relation with our environment. However one thing kept bothering Boxem: these solutions depend mostly on political decisions. Herein lies a problem. Because this does not change the feeling that he (and most of our population concerned with climate change) cannot seem to shake: it is the feeling that your personal efforts as an individual to encounter climate change are negligible in the big picture, a drop in the ocean.

Boxem thinks this is the main feeling that dispirits people to really act.

And this is the feeling he wants to break.

In an effort to do so he started with this painting. In it, Sir David touches an industrial landscape that will turn greener by an action of an individual: Boxem asks the visitors of his gallery to add one green dot. Just one, no more. It is clear that one dot does not have much impact, but the artwork shows that every dot was needed to accomplish the goal. With over 3.500 people contributing, the industrial landscape has turned green. It visualises that every little action does count; and shows how many care and act on the problem.

People from more than 30 countries have contributed in the gallery, or digitally via Instagram.

In 2021, Boxem started Greta Thunberg: Let’s Rewild The World to form a diptych with David Attenborough: Let’s Rewild The World. The diptych shows the oldest and youngest generation fighting for a better climate.

It is Boxem his aim to unite people, and by making them part of the artwork, make them part of the message. Because a simple dot of green paint and the right story, can make participants leave the gallery with more positivity, hope and decisiveness to keep making a change. This is the potential of a Team-Artwork.

In the summer of 2021 Boxem handed out 500 free plants to everyone who added a dot.