A ground-breaking interfaith exhibition of premier and emerging visual artists at St Martin-in-the-Fields, from 1 June – 31 July 2015.
The Bridge is an East-West travelling art exhibition organised and curated by CARAVAN, an interreligious and intercultural peacebuilding NGO. It showcases the work of 47 premier contemporary visual artists from 15 countries. Each artist has submitted one original work (created specifically for the exhibition) addressing the theme. The Bridge is an unparalleled gathering of international artists focusing on what they hold in common through their cultures and creeds: Christian, Muslim and Jewish.
“St Martin-in-the-Fields has a long history of being a meeting place of ideas, cultures, and traditions. To take an extreme example, it’s the church of the Admiralty and of the pacifists – just as its patron St Martin of Tours was first a soldier and later a monk. St Martin’s is a Christian church, but among its employees and its community of friends are people of a wide variety of faiths. At the same time St Martin’s is well-known as a place where people don’t just elide or tolerate differences, but come together to hammer out convictions and disagree passionately but respectfully about commitments. It’s on the corner of a world-famous square and in the centre of a world city. When St Paul went to the Areopagus in Athens, he was going to a place just like Trafalgar Square.”
Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar, St Martin-in-the-Fields
For all these reasons St Martin-in-the-Fields is a fitting place to host The Bridge. Interfaith work means cherishing your own tradition but seeing how it can resonate and be refined by dialogue with other traditions. It means recognising the historic complicity of faiths in cultural conflict. And it means working together to help people build new understanding and new vision through, not despite, the creative harmony of difference.
The Bridge serves as a common starting point on which to build, towards seeing the development of a world that inherently respects and honours cultural and religious diversity, living and working together in harmony. Through the work of 47 visionary contemporary artists, The Bridge aims to provide a link not only within communities, but between communities.
The Bridge will be exhibited at venues throughout the world. It opened on 2 February 2015 with a month-long exhibition in Paris to commemorate World Interfaith Harmony Week. After a residency in Cairo and two months at St Martin-in-the-Fields from 1 June – 31 July, The Bridge will be on display in venues in Europe and the United States.
Find out more about the artists and the exhibition organisers, CARAVAN here.
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