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Mirrors of Common Destiny Art Exhibit Reception

Art Reception

Join us for for the Mirrors of Common Destiny art reception. We will have a guest speaker and a presentation from one of the artists, Jean Claude Lofenia. The reception will provide insight to the cultures, history, and the artists themselves from Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Mirrors of Common Destiny Exhibit will run from November 14th to December 29th, 2023 hosted by Patchwork Indy.

Artists from Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will be featured. The curators of this show are Saw Kennedy from the Karen State of Burma and Jean Claude Lofenia from DRC. Many additional artists will also be featured and have sent their work from their home countries to be displayed at The Indianapolis Public Library. 

After the event, join us in the Clowes auditorium for a short performance from the Burmese American Community Institute (BACI). 

See our book list: Cultures of Central Africa and  Windows Into Burma

Biography of the Curators: 

• Saw Kennedy
  
  Born in a 1973 in a small Karen village in Karen State, Myanmar (also known as Burma), Saw Kennedy was forced to flee to Thailand to escape his country's repressive military government. Arriving first at Umpiem, a refugee camp along the Thailand/Burma border, Kennedy joined the march of thousands of other Karen people fearing their villages would be the next target for the government labor program and ethnic persecution. He fled Myanmar with his wife who carried their unborn child, his son Junior Kennedy.
  
  Saw Kennedy's artistic career began in 1988, the same year as the "8-8-88 Uprising" in Myanmar. He comes from a family of talented artists and originally founded a gallery with his three artistic brothers in Mawlamine, Mon State, Myanmar. After arriving in Umpiem refugee camp, Kennedy became the Youth Development Art Director and in 2005, moved to Mae Sot, Thailand. For years, he lived in Mae Sot and worked with the local community as a teacher and painter. Through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, Kennedy resettled to Seattle in 2008. His artwork has been featured in the Vidya Gallery. In 2019, he moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where he currently resides.
  
  Saw uses a unique charcoal method. He also expresses himself through the mediums of watercolor and acrylic. He is the Lead Organizer for the U&I Artist Group, a creative collaborative of artists from Myanmar (Burma) and the United States. ​U&I was started in order to connect the diverse peoples of Myanmar and the United States through art and other creative mediums. He is also the Lead Artistic Curator for Window to the Soul: A Burma Art Exhibition, which is the largest collection of Myanmar artwork to be exhibited in the United States. Saw is active within his community engaging youth and adult leadership alike from the various Burma ethnic nationalities, and is a committed intercultural bridge builder.
• Jean Claude Lofenia
  
  Jean Claude Lofenia was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He taught himself how to paint at the age of nine and later gained well known mentors in Kinshasa as an adult. Artistic expression has become a vital necessity of life for him to process the history of the country due to colonization and war. Through art, many have found that this is a form of activism- Jean Claude Lofenia was one of those artists who found a voice through artistic expression.
  
  Before Jean Claude was born, a movement emerged in the 1960s, through the independence of Belgium, known as popular painting or pop art. This genre portrays everyday scenes of Congolese life, as well as episodes from the country’s tumultuous history. Following the characteristics of a comic strip, the paintings depict everything that happens in the city and in this way, becomes a chronicle of the street. Moreover, they are often playful and humorous, while the messages conveyed are earnest and, in some cases, violent. In fact, this genre is described as an art that arose from the people and reflects their daily concerns.
  
  The current government opposes expressions or interpretation of current and past history, forcing Jean Claude to seek refuge in the U.S. While initially generating little interest abroad for a number of years, the genre gained international recognition in the early 2000s. Jean Claude’s speciality is oil, acrylic, and water based paints. 

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