The resonance between Hicks’ Quaker vision of peace and the questions I was asking in my own work felt urgent. What does peace look like today? Can it be plural, tender, even contradictory? Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdom offered not a conclusion, but a quiet proposition: that peace is not agreement, but the radical act of coexisting with difference.
—Lee Mingwei
Lee Mingwei’s ongoing collaborative artwork, Our Peaceable Kingdom, began in part with a 2018 visit to the Worcester Art Museum, where he encountered a painting by American folk artist Edward Hicks (c. 1833). Captivated by Hicks’ Quaker vision of peace, Lee invited artists to respond to and reinterpret this iconic painting, considering the enduring question, “What is peace?”
New artists have added to Our Peaceable Kingdom at every venue it has visited. Now comprising 42 wide-ranging artworks, Lee’s installation in Worcester will feature for the first time the original Hicks painting from WAM’s collection that inspired the project. The Museum’s presentation will also include three new paintings by Worcester-based artists Susan Hong-Sammons, Kat O’Connor, Emmanuel Manu Opoku. As it continues to expand globally, Our Peaceable Kingdom celebrates the range of perspectives reflected in each artist’s reinterpretation and invites viewers to reflect on their own visions of peace.
The Worcester Art Museum’s iteration of this exhibition is curated by Samantha Cataldo, Curator of Contemporary Art, and Yagnaseni Datta, the Sohail and Mona Masood Associate Curator of Asian and Islamic Art.
Featured artists
Abdul Abdullah, Zico Albaiquni, Khadim Ali, Radi Arwinda, Sam Cheng, Caludia Brand, Ambreen Butt, Yuyu Chen, Eunice Cheung Wai Man, Andrea Dezsö, Michael Eade, Kalus Geigle, N.S. Harsha, Amy Hill, Hong Kyoung Tack, Hsiao Pei-I, Huang Ko-Wei, Jeng Jundian, Jian Yi-Hong, Jan Sebastian Koch, Philip Kremer, Marie Lepetit, Fabien Lerat, Sunae Park, Simon Pasieka, Thea Perkins, Esther Rutenfranz, Mathes Schweinberger, Ingnasius Dicky Takndare, Sandy Wong Shin, Silver Star, Eilish Yee Ki Wong, Wu Ta-Kuang, Yeh Tsai-Wei, Yen Yu-Ting, Ran Zhang, Emmanuel Manu Opoku, Kat O’Connor, and Susan Hong-Sammons.
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