Utopia: Painting for Peace and Cultural Wellbeing Invitation, Exhibition

The exhibition was an output from the funded research Utopia: Painting for Peace and Cultural Wellbeing project.Utopia: Painting for Peace and Cultural Wellbeing Exhibition previously exhibited at Bankstown Arts Centre. Emmanuel’s own works on the themes of peace and wellbeing, alongside works from the students, were shown from Friday 8 March to Saturday 27 April 2024.
The Utopia: Painting for Peace and Cultural Wellbeing Project is an art-making workshop aimed at exploring possibilities for peace and wellbeing in our society through the eyes of young people. Young people are our future leaders of our planet and their voices matter; however, with multiple global crises, they are inheriting some of the most challenging times to grow up and live. Using the Cultural Wellbeing Framework as a guide, the project aims to instigate conversations about peace and wellbeing and potentially germinate new youth led projects that embed cultural wellbeing from the start.

In these workshops, students from Liverpool Boys and Liverpool Girls high schools will be supported to create their own artwork on peace and wellbeing in a series of co-designed workshops led by Emmanuel Assante. As a young Australian Ghanaian artist, Emmanuel wants to challenge the emergence of a divisive political and social rhetoric that pervades much of our lives through social media. Instead, he wants to inspire future leaders to reimagine a more peaceful future through the medium of art making. During these workshops, young people will guided in conversations around creative practice, how art influences our cultural well-being, and how all of these relate to issues of global wellbeing. Emmanuel Assante will be creating his own series of visual art pieces around themes of peace and wellbeing that will later be exhibited alongside the young peoples' artworks in 2024.