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Report in 2005 by Takuya Kaneda

This report by Takuya Kaneda comes after the Kids’ Guernica Festival held in Bali, August 2005

 

The KIDS’ GUERNICA International Children’s Peace Mural Project was inspired by the famous Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso who painted Guernica out of protest against the brutal bombing of the town Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, when Picasso created his masterpiece against the tragedy in the town of Guernica, it was because the first indiscriminate bombing of civilians in history. In 2001, the United States suffered from the first attack by high-jacked planes. Nearly seventy years after the tragedy in Guernica, the world is not free from violence and still full of terror and sorrow.

This project was started in 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary to mark the end of World War II by ART JAPAN NET WORK, by a cultural organization in Kyoto, Japan. In 2000, the KIDS’ GUERNICA International Committee was established to develop further the project. The main purpose of the KIDS’ GUERNICA project is to foster peace consciousness among people in the world through peace paintings on huge canvases the same size as Picasso’s Guernica (3.5 m x 7.8m). These paintings are created by children in different places of the world. This project includes both workshops and exhibitions. Many workshops followed after the first workshop in 1995. More than 100 wonderful peace paintings have been already completed for this project in nearly 40 countries by the spring of 2006. The KIDS’ GUERNICA Project can provide a wonderful opportunity for us to appreciate the diversity of the participating children's social and cultural backgrounds. Different cultures have different symbols and images to convey their messages of peace. For sure appreciation of cultural diversities in the paintings can be the basis of international understanding.

In 2000, the KIDS’ GUERNICA international exhibition was held in Kathmandu, Nepal, a country of the beautiful Himalayas. The next international exhibition was held in 2001 at Kronplatz in the Italian Alps. The open-air exhibition surrounded by snowy mountains was very spectacular. Last year, in August, 2005, the 10th Anniversary Exhibition was successfully held in Ubud, a village famous for its traditional arts at the centre of beautiful island Bali, Indonesia. Everyone shared there a peaceful time in a peaceful place of artistic people.

During these past ten years of this project, more than 10,000 children from different nationalities, cultures and religions have participated in the KIDS’ GUERNICA workshops and innumerable people saw the children’s wonderful paintings to express their strong wish for peace. Even when using the same theme ‘peace’, each painting shows different images of peace just as each child's face is different.

Usually, contemporary art emphasizes the importance of self-expression. However, the KIDS’ GUERNICA is not an individual art work but a collaborative one. This is the core of the project. In each workshop, the participating children work together to enlarge and paint their images of peace on a huge canvas. This process requires much time and patience. They can learn the importance of collaboration through the whole process of painting and be satisfied after achieving their great work. It is needless to say that we would not be able to realize world peace without working together. In this way the KIDS’ GUERNICA is a symbol of collaboration; working together toward the peaceful world.

Such collaboration takes place not only amongst the children but also between children and adults. The KIDS’ GUERNICA project can connect children and adults in society through art. This project has involved many teachers, parents, administrators, journalists and many others as well as children.

The Internet is playing a vital role in expanding this project. All the peace paintings are shown in the virtual gallery of the KIDS’ GUERNICA Website at www.kids-guernica.org. Thousands of people have accessed this Website all over the world and some contacted the International Committee online to organize new workshops. Networking via the Internet also inspired the management system of this project, eliminating hierarchical top-down management. Just as every computer user defines his or her own space on the Web, each organizer can organise a workshop in his or her own way, not strictly controlled from the top in this project. The role of the International Committee is not to control each workshop but only to facilitate each workshop as it works for the proliferation of peace.

It is very important for the KIDS’ GUERNICA to engage many people and to connect the arts with society just as a German artist, Joseph Beuys once stressed in his idea of social sculpture. The KIDS’ GUERNICA is not an expression of political propaganda for peace but an imaginative and artistic peace movement. Imagination is synonymous with having a dream. Art always gives a dream to people and stimulates their imagination. After the tragedy in New York, people became more pessimistic and could hardly dream of world peace. However, as long as we can imagine a peaceful world, there exists hope for it. A pacifist is often criticized as an idealist but world peace cannot be achieved without having an ideal. Idealizing requires imagination; the kind an artist needs when in front of a white canvas. Only the artistic creativity can shape it. The KIDS' GUERNICA itself could be perceived as a kind of art work which requires imagination and creativity. To have a dream imagination is needed and to realize it there is needed creativity. This project takes shape very much like an artist when creating his/her own work. Such imagination and creativity are also required to build a peaceful world.

The KIDS’ GUERNICA is not a project of virtual reality inside computers but one of actual experience although we have been fully utilizing Internet connections to manage this project and the paintings from different countries are exhibited in a virtual gallery of the website. In the KIDS’ GUERNICA workshops, the participating children have to face and experience realities linked to painting on such a huge canvas as size, weight and texture will make itself apparent through their painting. Their hands become dirty with colours because this is not computer art which never makes their hands coloured. The aspect of actual experience in this project seems educationally very important for especially children of today since they are living in the computer age of virtual reality.

The KIDS’ GUERNICA peace paintings might be called movable murals. Murals are usually painted on walls, but a wall is a symbol of separation just like the Berlin Wall. The movable murals on canvas, on the other hand, might be thought of as a metaphor for how to remove separation. World peace cannot be accomplished without removing separations between nations, races, religions, cultures and people.

Bali was chosen as an ideal site for the KIDS’ GUERNICA peace event because of its beautiful location and artistic tradition. Crete was also a very suitable site since an island of historically peace-loving people with a very rich cultural heritage. KIDS’ GUERNICA is virtually an art work on a global-sized canvas to express the spirit of peace. This spirit connects each and every workshop site in an effort to overcome bloodstained places of conflict. It aims to highlight instead several beautiful spots on earth like Bali and Crete. This art work should not be appreciated far away from earth as if in a spaceship but through our imaginative vision.

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