Contents
Current and Past Exhibits
Steps to Borrowing an Exhibit
Gallery of Photos and Art from the Exhibits
A display of matching art from U.S. and Iraqi Children, Cooley-Dickenson Hospital, Northampton, MA, 2006
The Exhibits
The exhibits are about people; they are not about politics.
Using photographs, children's art, and a minimal amount of text, the Iraqi Children's Art Exchange Project opens a window onto Iraq and Iraqis and Iraqi refugees, especially children in Amman, Jordan. The exhibits provide visual images that enable people — children as well as adults — to put the country and its people into a meaningful human context. The images tell a story we do not get from reading the morning newspaper or listening to the nightly news.
The Iraqi Children's Art Exchange Project exhibits, like all art presentations, are created to engage the viewers; they invite reflection and encourage discussion. The exhibits have been hung at conferences,in schools, churches, libraries and galleries; the material is flexible and can be arranged to suit the needs of the borrower. The photographs and children's art can be a meaningful addition or backdrop to other events such as concerts, films, lectures and panel discussions.
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Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can
speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It
is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain
that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are
surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is
never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is
turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits
the sight.
- Jon Berger, Ways of Seeing |
