On Monday, the Intercultural Management Institute welcomed "Children's Art From Around The World" to American University. The exhibit, which runs in McKinley Hall through December, was made possible by The International Child Art Foundation (ICAF), a non-profit organization that promotes children's creativity and the arts both nationally and internationally.
It is the only organization with that goal in the world, according to its website.
One prevailing message becomes abundantly clear at the exhibit: the artwork might be produced by children eight to 12 years old, but the creative images and social commentary expressed by these adolescents belie wisdom far greater than their years.
Camilla Cohen, a 12-year-old from the United States, combined a foreground in which a pearly white dove is perched gallantly on top of rainbow colored glasses before a background of black graves and decaying urban sprawl. Meanwhile, a painting from Mongolian Echmonch Suchbat, 10, featured an ornate circular montage of horses with multi-colored manes and mountains that reached to the moon while modern technological conveniences such as airplanes flew overhead.
The ICAF brought a wide variety of children's pieces to McKinley. Styles vary from overtly realistic to clearly abstract. Despite their stylistic and regional differences, however, all the featured artists had a clear sense of social responsibility to both their specific homes and to the world in general. This is not to say that all these pre-teens were prepared to tackle the issues of the world, but there was a definite sense that these children are using their art to convey a message of goodwill.
A common theme among the artwork was the need for adults to take responsibility for actions that have made the world a more difficult and dangerous place in which to live. Many paintings were produced by children in underdeveloped countries, and the works expressed dissatisfaction and sadness over conflict in their homeland. One picture was showered with the word "peace" and the year 2000, which represented the wish for peace in Lebanon after that year.
The artwork itself varied in complexity. A few pieces appeared as little more than carefully crayoned images, while others were elaborate mural designs that paid close attention to landscape, form and especially color. This was especially apparent in paintings like Michalina Celejewska's, which contrasted bright blue, yellow and purple buildings on a city block with an ominous blood red background. These stark images were magnified by a smudging of many of the colors to create a distorted effect. It was unclear where one shade began and another ended.
Perhaps the most compelling piece, however, was one by Liberian Permanent Wilmot, 11, who composed a profile head painting with images of a village and family surrounding a crying Liberian child. The quotation next to the painting simply said, "My Africa is crying."
This simple message gave this exhibit the proper perspective and shows how, for some children in the world, creating art is more than just painting beautiful pictures.
