The Ateneo Peace Institute (API) and Gallery of the Peninsula and Archipelago (GPA) in partnership with the Peace Advocates Zamboanga (PAZ) and Katilingban Para saLalambuan Inc, launched the “Arts Peacetival” Peace Art Exhibit on December 2 2014 at the GPA as part of the Mindanao Week of Peace 2014 celebration.
Arts Peacetival: Peace Art Exhibit is a collection of arts of a majority women, community health workers and a few men from a series of healing sessions dubbed as Art is Healing. The art works are expressions of who they are at this time of their lives, of healing process they went through, of their connectedness with themselves and with each other.
The artists’ works resonate with the current theme of the Mindanao Week of Peace, Healing the Past, Building the Future. The theme recognizes peoples’ capacities to heal the self, and to heal each other, to move from being wounded to being healed. the process may take some time, but the journey towards healing is as important as the goal itself.
The art exhibit, launched as part of the Mindanao Week of Peace, is also an affirmation of the need for personal and collective healing; of peoples’ capacities to journey together towards a future that is better and kinder.
Present during the ribbon cutting ceremony held on December 2, 2014 were Fr Angel Calvo, PAZ President, Ms Perla Ledesma, API director and Ms Lorna Jumalon Fernandez, artist mentor during the healing sessions. The CHW artists were also represented during the ribbon cutting ceremony.
