Prague, March 29, 2018

It’s a great honor to be part of Amnesty International’s “I WELCOME” campaign through this Art for Amnesty project exhibited at DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague.

When I was asked to participate I wondered: “What do I do?”, “What do I welcome?”, “What have I learned from my predictable kind of work? I make drawings and I draw, among other things, what people see out their windows. So, what have I learned from doing this seemingly simple thing?”
I thought about it.
I thought I had learned about perspective.
I thought I had learned about expectations.
I thought I had learned about inspirations.
And, perhaps, I had learned about aspirations.
Window views, I thought, are metaphors of one’s journey through life. They are static, but they are also incredibly dynamic. I realized that they are also mirrors as they force us to reflect on ourselves and our lives.

So Art for Amnesty’s founder Bill Shipsey and I wondered, “What would we envision for a project like this?”
And the answer was: “A magical, open window onto a world in which all places, those that today are privileged and self-centered — like me, like where I come from — are intertwined with those from which people are escaping.”
We are one, single, big thing on earth, and we all want happiness. But if we lived in a world that embodied what some politicians are proclaiming today, we would be living in a world made of walls with no windows, where we, the privileged, would also be living in darkness.

See the “I WELCOME” drawing here: https://matteopericoli.com/portfolio-item/i-welcome/[/av_one_full]