Use Your Ears is a public art project made up of hundreds of handmade ears installed throughout Amsterdam.

The ears are symbols of listening.

Or perhaps more accurately, they are symbols of our failure to listen.

The project began after the murder of Lisa from Abcoude in 2025. Like many people, I was shocked by the violence of what had happened. But I was equally struck by how familiar the conversations that followed felt. For a brief moment, people paid attention. They expressed outrage. They asked how something like this could happen.

And then, as so often happens, life moved on.

Yet violence against women did not.

As a textile artist, I found myself returning to a phrase my father used to say when I wasn't listening:

"Those things on the side of your head aren't ornaments."

In other words: use your ears.

The phrase stayed with me. It made me think about how many times women speak about fear, harassment, inequality, and violence, only to find themselves unheard, dismissed, or forgotten.

So I started making ears.

Why ears?

An ear is both ordinary and strange.

It listens, but it can also ignore.

As an ornament, it becomes playful. As a severed fragment of the body, it becomes unsettling.

The ears hanging throughout the city are intended as reminders. Small interruptions in everyday life that ask us to stop and consider:

What does it mean to truly listen?

Isn't everyone already aware of gender-based violence?

That is precisely the question this project is interested in.

We know the statistics.

We know the stories.

We know that violence against women exists.

And yet the problem persists.

Use Your Ears is not interested in awareness alone. It asks what comes after awareness.

How do we move from knowing to understanding?

From understanding to action?

And what role might each of us play in creating that change?

How can I take part?

There are many ways.

You can make an ear.

You can explore the toolkit.

You can read more about the realities of gender-based violence.

You can start conversations with the people around you.

Or you can simply begin by listening.

Because change rarely starts with having all the answers.

Sometimes it starts with paying attention.