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<div>this peace sculpture to me is an offering of sorts, a vessel / art piece for everyone we’ve lost to these senseless wars and senseless violence the last few years. it’s a sculpture about the possibility of life after destruction. i encountered this symbol first when i really needed it in my life, back in october of 2023. a mother in bilin, in the west bank of palestine, planted a garden of these flowers inside these tear gas canisters, after one of them killed her son. to me her act became a symbol of resilience, hope, and the possibility of life after death. it also became a symbol for how we relate to one another; when someone hurts us, we have a chance to decide how we will process it and react— so much relies on that reaction, on both a micro and macro scale.
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<div>there’s a long tradition of flowers used to de-escalate the force of a weapon— george harris putting a flower into the end of a rifle held by an american soldier at an anti-vietnam war protest. allen ginsberg promoted the use of flowers as peaceful symbols of resistance to war during the 60s. there is a lot of power in a flower used to quell a weapon and there is also so much power in the symbol of a flower in a tear gas canister as a whole— the sculpture we are building is an invitation to sit and meditate on these various messages— maybe you are in a place in your life when you need one of them.
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<div>the piece i am building with the help of the <a href="https://www.theopus.group/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAabZuDAn44T4NddFrQ5ZpbHy2EKKLhBI0Je_DgFCEROyf-LXILF6j0wz2_E_aem_Oppo6vFHdLgbUzP8pgkE4Q" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">opus group</a> is a large scale version of the tear gas canister with flower in it. the goal is to have it be a very large and bright and powerful symbol— mainly of hope and the hope for peace, but also of resilience and how we should relate to one another— with compassion, empathy, a soft understanding. the sculpture is around 16 feet tall and we are outfitting it with LED’s so it’ll shine from the inside out. the flower will be a large red desert rose with large petals also bright and lit with LED’s. the canister/grenade is made from pieces of plywood that have been laser cut to fit together to create the grenade shape and it’ll be covered with a black dayglo acrylic fabric to emit the light from inside the canister— even though the grenade will be black during the day to stay true to the original image, at night it’ll glow very brightly. the sculpture will sit atop a high steel rebar that will light up in sections at night. there will be a bench at the base of the sculpture to invite people to sit beneath it and hopefully mediate on the symbol and its meaning. we’ve scaled down the original version in order to meet our fundraising goals. the sculpture will debut at burning man (where new art and artists are welcome more than an art gallery) and will hopefully travel around to other events when it leaves the playa, wherever the message of hope is needed. although “burning man” art may seem frivolous to some, the event is an epicenter of ideas and culture and people who are responsible for changes in the real world. i think it’s important for a sculpture representing the reality of our current world to be present in a space that claims to be a “utopia”.
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<div>if the idea behind the piece resonates with you at all, a donation is highly needed and appreciated. we are at the very end stages of building the piece haven’t had a chance to assemble the entire sculpture yet and will only have a fully built piece to show you on the playa but i’ve added some progress images here. i will update any donors with progress and movement of the sculpture after august 2024 and share photos of where the sculpture travels to. thank you so much for helping build this public art piece and thank you for reading.
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<div>(gofundme crops all the images to this ratio so it’s impossible to share the full image here)
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Ahmed Atwa

Rebecca Padilla

Joe Sumpter

Arunprasanna S P

Anonymous

Leven Chen

Azer Chouchane

Ray Huang

David Sepanik

Bronwen Phillips

Liz Yun

Da Dad

Trevor Twist

Rick Lee

Janis Hesse

Help Fund A Large Scale Peace Sculpture

Help Fund A Large Scale Peace Sculpture

Noch $5,290. Hilf uns, Dynamik aufzubauen.