Impressions of peace

Suda Perera looks at how art can be used as a form of peaceful protest.

Artists at work in Wadi Salib. The artistic intervention saw protesters turning the ruins into works of art The art had a simple message: bomb attacks are deafening, leaving people unable to hear talks of peace. Beware anger poem.

I recently went to a photographic exhibition put on by the International Medical Corp and National Geographic at the OXO Gallery in London. The saying ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’ definitely applied to some of the works on display; beautiful composition complemented striking light and shade balance. The most amazing thing about this exhibition was that the pictures were not taken by professional photographers, or even keen amateurs, but by children – Ugandan children living in refugee camps to be more precise.

This exhibition was a great example of the use of art as catharsis, allowing victims of war to express themselves and deal with their grief in a constructive way. Art is a fantastic tool for post-war recovery, but what about using art to bring about peace in the first place?

Over Christmas and the New Year I spent three weeks in Israel and the Palestinian territories discovering the value of art as an instrumental tool in peace-building. Using art as a means of protest is not new, and neither really is using it as a universal language of conciliation, but the latter has largely been overlooked in peace-building operations. When I saw the Wall of Separation that ran through Jerusalem, I found myself both amazed and disturbed. On the one hand there was no way that this hefty structure, which stretched uniformly for as far as the eye could see, could ever be regarded as art and it certainly couldn’t pass as an icon of peace. Yet, despite its monstrosity, and amidst the witty protest graffiti that was frequently scrawled on it, there were occasional glimmers of hope – whether it be in the form of drawn-on ladders that stretched impressively high - or in the sheer numbers of messages of solidarity towards the plight of those divided.

Sometimes it is what is lost in translation that can prevent diverse cultures from cooperating. But art can transcend these language barriers and doesn’t carry the adversarial connotations of political debate or military action. It seemed to me that the country was full of Arab art and Israeli art, but despite being of equal beauty, rarely did the two blend.


During my visit I witnessed an artistic intervention on the semi-demolished wreckage of Wadi Salib – one of Haifa’s oldest Arabic villages. Seized in the 1948 war, Wadi Salib lay in ruins and was being bulldozed to accommodate a Jewish artists’ village. The artistic intervention saw protesters turning the ruins into works of art; sculptures, mosaics, installation and paintings. The art had a simple message: bomb attacks are deafening, leaving people unable to hear talks of peace. Try giving art attacks a go and see who looks and listens then.