Embracing Our Differences is a not-for-profit organization aiming to expand consciousness and open the heart to celebrate the diversity of the human family.
They organize an annual, large-scale, juried art exhibition on the theme of promoting respect for diversity, be it cultural, religious, of gender, economical, racial, etc. The call to artist includes a section for students and another for adults professionals, in 2021 out of a total record of around 16000 works of art from around the world, they chose 50 for their annual exhibition, and I was honored to be one of those chosen in the professional category.
The creative rational for my approach came from recent research on DNA resulting in the fact that our genetic heritage is very mix, a person from Mexico can have in his DNA a provenance form France, Argentina, Congo, Poland and Viet Nam, at the same time. I thought that knowing how mixed we all are, it would made easier for all of us to accept and embrace each other, as a part of the big human family.
Graphically i wanted to visualize that fact with a simple image, which can almost be a logo portraying a human face in a fingerprint with various colours dramatize the diversity of our nature as a species.
The exhibit took place at Bayfront Park Island, Sarasota Florida; in an open-air museum with 5 x 4 meters billboards.
In addition to the exhibition, a comprehensive series of educational initiatives, programs and resources designed for teachers and students were launched.
Thus, students visited the exhibition and the theme was discussed in schools all over the United States, helping young people to open their minds and hearts to both diversity and arts.
When I hear that he Baltimore's Orioles' Ed Smith Stadium also organised a mini-display with a selection of 6 of the artworks, I was really happy that mine was one of those, im sure that this initiative really creates awareness and make people think about it.
