PartnersGlobal is committed to fostering peace by empowering communities. Partners believes artists from communities experiencing hardship should be recognized for efforts to create a constructive outlet for tragedy and acting as ambassadors of their communities to the world. Art is also a coping mechanism for those whose lives have been altered by war. Artists can turn trauma into pieces of work that tell their story and the stories of their communities. Resilience is the ability to adapt to extreme circumstances and be successful. No group demonstrates resiliency like artists who transform tragedy and pain into beautiful reminders of human strength and perseverance.
Arts4Resilience (A4R) is an annual event series hosted by PartnersGlobal that seeks to celebrate the importance of artists’ contribution to building resilience in communities experiencing conflict. Arts4Resilience aims to empower young and experienced artists and activists who demonstrate the transformative power of art as a tool for movement building, human rights activism, and building resilience by presenting artwork from featured artists and giving a selection of honors to outstanding individuals whose work embody these tenets.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the 2023 Arts4Resilience celebration. You can find a summary of the Four Winters movie screening, art walk, performances, and honors ceremony by watching this highlights reel.
Stay tuned for information about the Arts4Resilience 2024!
2023 Arts4Resilience Recap
by Partners GlobalLearn more about Four Winters
Over 25,000 Jewish partisans fought back against the Nazis and their collaborators from deep within the forests of WWII’s Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Belarus. Against extraordinary odds, they escaped Nazi slaughter, transforming from young innocents to courageous resistance fighters. Shattering the myth of Jewish passivity, these last surviving partisans tell their stories of resistance in FOUR WINTERS, revealing a stunning narrative of heroism and resilience.
The Csekö János Art of Resistance Honor
Janos (Jan) was born into a Jewish family Hungary. When the Nazis began to occupy Jan’s country, he joined an early resistance movement which distributed pamphlets. At 18 years old, Jan was caught and jailed for nearly a year. Upon his release, Jan joined a group of Jewish Freedom fighters who occupied the forests of Yugoslavia. Jan lost his life providing cover to his comrades, who managed to escape, from approaching Nazis.
The Csekö János Art of Resistance Honor was established to recognize the commitments and contributions of remarkable individuals using resistance to promote peace and resilience in communities experiencing conflict.
Support International Peacebuilding Projects and Art Activists!
Learn about this year’s Arts4Resistance featured artists.
Ellyn Weiss is committed to engaging with the most pressing issues we face as a society. Most of her work over the past decade has been related to climate change. including a show opening in February 2023 at The American University Museum in DC called The Human Flood. But the work shown here springs from a different source: the day after the Supreme Court denied women the right to reproductive freedom, she went into her studio, dug out some old canvas, threw them on the floor, and began to paint. About a year and 35 canvases later, the series, entitled Rage Births Riot, was shown at AIR Gallery in Brooklyn.
Kyaw Moe Khine (professionally known as Bart Was Not Here) is a Burmese artist in exile based in New York working with large scale canvases, figurines, sculptural installations, and digital illustrations. He explores his art practice through world-building, anthropomorphism, and mythopoeia in a visual language that stemmed from curiosity and escapism, which were his ultimate tools to explore the outside world growing up in the isolated country of Burma. Bart graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore as a Fine Arts major in 2018. In 2021, he had to leave his home country due to his involvement in the resistance against the military coup d’état. He is currently an artist in residence at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York.
Jahan Ara Rafi is a painter from Afghanistan. In 2006, Jahan and other female artists established the Centre for Women Artists in Kabul, with the aim of introducing contemporary Afghan women’s art to a wide audience and advancing it locally through the commissioning of new artworks. Her work centers on women’s identities and social roles, reminding viewers about the limitations and “silence” imposed on women, and their historically inherited status. Included in the A4R artwalk is a piece from her collection called Waiting for the Sun.
Carolina Mayorga is a Washington DC-based interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses social and political issues like migration, war, and identity. Her works delve into the lives of individuals whose joy and wisdom provide authentic and uplifting messages to children affected by recent wars and conflicts worldwide.
Shedrick Pelt is a creative professional based in Washington, D.C., originally hailing from Huntsville, Alabama, and with a background rooted in Harlem, New York. Dedicated to fostering culture and community, Shedrick’s work is situated at the intersection of time and place, allowing him to delve into intricate conversations and themes while embodying a role akin to that of a historian. With over a decade of experience, Shedrick specializes in photojournalism, portraiture, music, and commercial photography. In 2022, he curated a photo exhibition of the historic Capitol insurrection and subsequent DC lockdown. Recently he has documented the protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Enea Lebrun is a French artist, photographer and cultural manager who lives and works in Panama. Her work focuses on current social and environmental challenges, addressing from the field of documentary and artistic photography. Her practice involves long-term, in-depth research with the subjects of her work. She has participated in group exhibitions in Chile, Panama, Spain and France (Best Of at Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles). She is a co-founder of the Residencia Nómada program, a program that questions the limits between art and craft and moves the opportunities for artistic professionalization from the urban centers to rural areas. Jenené, her first photobook in collaboration with Andrea Lino was published in February 2023 and was the subject of an individual exhibition at MAC Panama.
Arleen Seed is an artist living in Silver Spring, MD. After formal training in painting and sculpture as a university student she put the creation of art aside for a career on the global stage delivering technological solutions for development. She worked for the United Nations and the World Bank in over 50 countries and lived in Africa for ten years. Her work reflects issues such as diversity, identity, and the power of the individual to withstand oppression and violence. The two pieces included atArts4Resilience are examples of resistance to racial hatred.