The War and the Color
An exhibition by Anoosheh Djam, the manager of Djam Art Academy, and her young adolescent trainees in January 2016 in Niavaran Artistic Creations Foundation, Niavaran Cultural Centre.
History has witnessed all-out wars, and World War II can be considered as the last full-scale war. Most of the wars after that time (but not all of them) were civil wars and factional wars.
Whatever the type of war, whether limited or all-out, short or long, civil or against foreigners, cold or warm, and so on, it has drastic and irretrievable consequences.
War connects hundreds, thousands and even millions of lives to the fear of death, anxiety of an unclear future, migration and homelessness, loneliness and defencelessness, separation and loss, poverty, starvation, illness, and much more.
For Iranian people, war is not just an abstract and unfamiliar word in dictionaries, history books or movies. All of us have experienced the bitterness of war based on our conditions and our age. Fortunately, our children have just heard about the war in our personal and collective memories, and they haven’t experienced it themselves.
Now the question is whether we must familiarize our children and young adolescents with such a bitter concept.In other words, with so many topics around us, why should children draw pictures about the war?
The answer is short and to the point: a group of children in other parts of the world have forgotten that they are children and they are struggling with things that we can’t even think about. Do you remember the little Syrian refugees?
The combination of children and young adolescents’ innocent, honest, and fearless perspectives and the language of art has a message for us:
Dear adults! We are young, but we care about the world. What about you? Do you care about the world?