The child, for Helnwein, is the symbol of innocence, but also innocence betrayed.
In today's world, the malevolent forces of war, poverty, sexual exploitation, and the numbing predatory influence of modern media assault the virtue of children. Helnwein--who grew up in Austria in the years following World War II in the somber atmosphere of a defeated country that had embraced Nazism--has an emotional tie to children who have been robbed of experiencing childhood without trauma. Since his earliest works, he has linked children with pain, or the suggestion of pain. The wounded child became for him a metaphor for the chaos of an emotionally vacant world.
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