Exhibit raises money, and more, for refugee artists

A silent auction of artwork shown through the month of September in Bethel’s Regier Art Gallery raised more than $3,000 for the artists—but its value went beyond money.

Rachel Epp Buller, left, and Mel Lehman with the painting “Untitled,” by Nidaa Kareem Risan, an Iraqi artist now living in Canada, that was part of the Building Bridges exhibit at Bethel and which the college purchased

New York City-based Common Humanity was responsible for bringing to the United States the 81 paintings (29 were hung at Bethel) by professional Iraqi artists and Palestinian art students—all of whom have been forced to flee their homes for Europe and North America over the past decade.

Wichita-based People of Faith for Peace and a coalition of Muslim, Christian, interfaith and college/university partners organized Building Bridges, an art exhibit and sale that took place in several Wichita galleries in addition to Bethel’s.

Jan Swartzendruber of Newton, part of People of Faith for Peace, was a driving force behind Building Bridges in south-central Kansas. She learned about Common Humanity through her friend Susan Miller, a friend of Common Humanity director Mel Lehman. A love of art and a desire to take part in active peacebuilding between Christians and Muslims motivated her to help organize Building Bridges, Swartzendruber says.

“The network formed by our volunteers has achieved our goal of forming friendships between Wichita-area Muslims and non-Muslims,” she adds.

The gross amount (80 percent of total sales) from the Bethel sale was $3,200. Rachel Epp Buller ’96, Regier Art Gallery director and Bethel associate professor of visual art and design, noted that this came from the sale of nine paintings in addition to art cards from Common Humanity and some art reproductions donated by Shafiq Hasan ’75 of Newton.

“The money does matter,” Lehman says. “These are people who are now in entry-level jobs—they are among the working poor.

“But more important is the validation that they have something beautiful [to contribute] that people can connect with. Who they are matters, and that they can keep making these beautiful things.”

The beauty of the art along with what it represents gave Lehman the idea to start trying to sell the work, he says. He was in south-central Kansas for two weeks, with speaking engagements at Bethel College, Hesston College and elsewhere.

The art reinforces several of the points he makes in public presentations like those he did at Bethel and Hesston during his time in Kansas.

Among those points: that (according to “Lehman calculation”) “99.99 percent of Arabs and Muslims are not terrorists, and we should be starting a wisdom dialogue with those 99.99 percent, who want peace as much as most of us do. One of the [Building Bridges] artists said, ‘I’m an artist, I’m not a fighter.’”

Another is “to recognize the greatness of Middle East heritage and culture. Iraq is the land of prophets. Baghdad is ‘the House of Wisdom.’” The American perspective of the Middle East and its people, reinforced by popular media, is far too narrow, he says.

“The pictures we see are of minorities, in the most extreme situations. What about all the good and positive things that are happening?

“I traveled [multiple times] in the Middle East mostly by myself and the only time I was in danger was from Americans [bombing Baghdad in 2003]. Neither Christianity nor Islam teaches violence, and in fact to do violence in Islam means you are not truly Muslim.”

He hopes for the exhibits to convey “a fresh look at the Arab and Muslim world,” one that Westerners seldom see, one that will build bridges between those worlds.