Artwork shows the many ways to 'Say Yes' for children
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From left to right, Tania Sarony, Gary Faro and
Hanya Salah setting up blocks to represent 10 points
of the Say Yes for Children pledge. |
NEW YORK, 6 May 2002 - There are some extra visitors
in the United Nations Visitors' Lobby these days. Brightly
colored wooden silhouettes of children, nearly six feet
high, thread a path into an exhibit of art and photographs
that children around the world created to support the
global "Say
Yes for Children" campaign.
Strung up between the figures are posters that UNICEF
offices around the world made for the campaign. Behind
them is the focus of the exhibit - the children's art.
Some of it is bright and colourful, like the vivid handprints
made by children in France to represent peace. Some
is dark and painful, like a painting by a child refugee
in Norway of a soldier in camouflage shooting a man.
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UNICEF staff set up an exhibition of 'Say Yes for
Children' materials from around the world in the
Main Gallery of the United Nations. |
The Say Yes campaign, which spearheads a new Global
Movement for Children, spells out 10 critical actions
that need to be undertaken to improve the lives of children
around the world. These actions range from fighting
HIV/AIDS and providing access to education to protecting
children from the scourges of war and environmental
degradation.
One entire wall of the exhibit features a map of the
world with various small pieces of art placed according
to the countries from which they came. "We got
things from all over the world, so it seemed only appropriate
to use a map to portray that this really is a global
movement," says Tania Sarony, a consultant with
UNICEF.
Artwork floods in
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Yes hands of peace drawn by children in Canada. |
UNICEF sent out the request for art for this exhibition
to its worldwide offices in mid-2001. The packages started
flooding in. Children from a rehabilitation center in
Uganda sent paintings of how they had been affected
by war. UNICEF offices in Myanmar, the United Republic
of Tanzania and the Russian Federation sent posters
that they had created to promote Say Yes. The Nicaraguan
office sent an enormous painted banner. Photographs
arrived that had been taken by dozens of children living
on the streets of the Philippines who had been given
cameras to document their lives.
"The hardest part was trying to figure out a structure
to display the artworks," Sarony says. "We
wanted it to be informal, welcoming and unifying."
Children form the framework
"Our first idea was to display the artwork with
250 hula-hoops," says Gary Faro, a designer. The
hula-hoop idea fell by the wayside - Faro says all 250
of them are still sitting in his garage - and a new
concept took hold, that of the wooden children.
Sarony says, "The wooden figures act as a solid
framework, a constant reminder that this is about children."
The exhibit will be on display in the UN Visitor's
Lobby during the Children's Forum and the Special Session
on Children, 8-10 May.
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