The first six documented works by Essebes
The Whole World Is Watching wasn’t planned as a series.
Disbelief began as a portrait during a renewed focus on oil and canvas painting. Inspired by atomic-punk imagery and 1950s aviation gear, the painting changed repeatedly as it developed.
Somewhere in that process, it stopped being simply a portrait. The expression became more intense, the blue eyes appeared, and the figure began to feel as though she were witnessing something she could not believe.
That realization became the beginning of the series.
Read the story behind DisbeliefAs the paintings continued, certain elements returned: intensely blue eyes, goggles, headphones, the green mark and the red mark. What began partly as visual experimentation in Disbelief developed into a language connecting the paintings.
EsseBes Disbelief — eye detail
The blue eyes represent innocence. But they also change the meaning of watching. The whole world may be watching what is happening — but the children are watching too. They see what adults and institutions choose to confront, what they protect, and what they allow to continue.
EsseBes Protect — goggles detail
The goggles began with the atomic-punk and aviation imagery that inspired Disbelief. As the series developed, they became something more: protective gear — armor around innocence in a world that should already be protecting children.
EsseBes Disbelief — headphone detail
The headphones also began as part of the aviation-inspired visual language. Across the series, they take on a protective quality — another layer between childhood innocence and what is happening around it.
EsseBes Disbelief — green detail
The recurring green mark becomes another form of protection — armor — while also functioning as a visible sign of protest. As it moves from painting to painting, it helps bind the individual portraits into a single visual language.
EsseBes Disbelief — red-mark detail
First appearing intuitively, the red facial mark became more deliberate as the series developed. Essebes has come to understand it as a trace of what protection could not keep out — the point where innocence has already been touched by what it should never have had to witness.
The whole world is watching. But the children are watching too.
Together, these recurring elements connect five different faces to the same question: what does it mean to witness something and still fail to protect those who need protecting?
The Whole World Is Watching began not with a plan to make protest art, but with frustration.
For Essebes, watching has a double meaning. The world watches these stories unfold. But the children represented in the paintings are watching, too.
They see what adults, institutions and society choose to do — or fail to do — when children need protection.
The question running through the series is not simply what we see. It is what we do about what we see.
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching I
Disbelief began as a portrait inspired by atomic-punk and 1950s aviation. As the painting changed, so did the figure. The artist’s reaction became something like “Que le Fuck” — an intentionally mixed-language expression of the thought running through her head: How can this possibly be happening? At first, Essebes thought she was painting a victim. She eventually realized she was not. This was a child watching. Her innocence is still there. The question is whether the adults around her will protect her.
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching II
The second painting moves from disbelief toward refusal. The thought behind this one became “Que Diablos” — What the hell? The movement between languages reinforces the idea behind the series: the whole world is watching. You do not need the same language to understand that something is unacceptable. The blue eyes, headphones and green armor return. But this figure can see. She is watching what is happening. And she is not accepting it.
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching III
Protect broadens the series beyond girls. Abuse does not happen only to girls. It happens to boys, and to children across ethnicities and ages. For Essebes, the question became increasingly direct: why are the rich and powerful so capable of being protected while children remain vulnerable? The blue eyes represent innocence. The goggles and headphones become protection. Protect the kids.
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching IV
Unjust turns toward boys who suffered abuse within the Catholic Church and the revelations that brought what happened to public attention. For Essebes, it carries the same painful contradiction running through the series: something can become widely known while the people who should have been protected were still failed. This painting is for them.
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching V
Distress is the fifth and largest painting in the series. Here, the focus widens toward America itself. The American imagery is deliberately wrong — backwards, upside down and unsettled. For Essebes, it reflects a country that cannot seem to get itself straight while everyone watches events unfold. The upside-down flag becomes a signal of distress. How can we all be watching this unfold, and still nothing happens?
EsseBes The Whole World Is Watching VI
Fury represents the point at which witnessing becomes unbearable. The figure is screaming, but there is no sound. The word ENOUGH marks the moment when disbelief can no longer remain passive. Her blue eyes remain: the fury has not erased the innocence. She is still the child.
“If we’re not showing the ugliness, the truth won’t come out. It’s too easy to hide.”
The series grew partly from Essebes’s anger surrounding the Epstein files, the abuse of children and what the artist perceived as an absence of accountability.
But The Whole World Is Watching is not limited to one case. It reaches toward the broader failure to protect children — and toward the responsibility that comes with seeing what is happening.
The whole world is watching.
The question is what we do about what we see.
An ongoing Protest Series by Essebes