Cal State LA faculty collaborates on Art of Peace project focusing on Rwanda

Cal State LA Professor Sarah Minslow is collaborating on an upcoming Art of Peace exhibition that will feature works by artists from former conflict zones where western peacekeepers were deployed in the 1990s, such as Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Timor-Leste.

With a focus on the East African country of Rwanda, where the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda was established following the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, she is currently writing catalogue essays and creating educational content to be included in the exhibition to take place at The Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth.

Minslow is a co-principal investigator on a grant project, entitled "Art of Peace: New Perspectives in Visual Art on Peacekeeping from the 1990s." The exhibit is a component of the project, which is supported by the largest grant ever given to a humanities and arts project by the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Through the support of the grant, Minslow along with her team spent two weeks in Rwanda this summer, investigating the important and complex role of art and narrative in the politics of international peacekeeping missions in the 1990s to disrupt established and potentially ethically problematic ways of thinking about the "art of peace."

"Our goal is to hear from people who experienced genocide and lived through the peacekeeping and reconciliation processes and to gain an understanding of the ways they see their own works contributing to national memory and identity," said Minslow, who is an associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Letters at Cal State LA.

During the trip, Minslow and her team toured two collaborative art centers, Inema and Indiba, and studios of Rwanda artists Jean-Baptiste Sebukangaga, Innocent Nkurunziza, and Cedric Mizero. They also toured the National Art Gallery of Rwanda and visited two genocide memorials, including Murambi Technical School (now known as the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre).

Additionally, the team members met with academics in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Rwanda. At the Gikondo campus in Kigali, Minslow co-led a two-day workshop with practicing artists, architects, and curators, delving into how art has contributed to peace and reconciliation efforts in a post-genocide Rwanda.

Based on their exploration in Rwanda, Minslow said: "Our team selected works from three of the artists, Innocent, Cedric, and Teta Chel, to include in an exhibition of the Art of Peace to open in February 2025."

Funded by the ARC Linkage Projects grant, the Art of Peace project is led by Curtin University in Perth, Australia, in partnership with Minslow and eight other researchers from Australia and the United Kingdom.

The Linkage Projects grant opportunity supports projects that initiate or develop long-term strategic research alliances to apply advanced knowledge to problems, acquire new knowledge, and as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research. The ARC is a Commonwealth entity within the Australian Government.

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