Exhibition tour by Prof Kit Messham-Muir, Curtin University professor and a curator of the Art of Peace exhibition currently on at the Art Gallery of Western Australia

Art of Peace: Art After War is a thought-provoking exhibition featuring nine artists who have created artworks shaped by living amongst the horrors and aftermath of war and conflict.

The exhibition brings together artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Timor-Leste to explore how visual artists address the trauma of war and life after conflict. In the last thirty years, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Timor-Leste each emerged from different versions of social and human destruction caused by the genocide of hundreds of thousands of people. Understandably, peace following war is hard work, and life in a post-conflict society is very different in each of these countries.

Prof Kit Messham-Muir led a team of international scholars on fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Timor-Leste during 2024. The exhibition, Art of Peace: Art After War, is the result.

Image: Mladen Miljanović The Final Battle 2024. 4K video installation with sound, 66 minutes. © Mladen Miljanović. Courtesy of Mladen Miljanović, produced by Introvert Films Berlin and Asimetrik, 2024. Installation view, The Art of Peace: Art After War, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 2025. Photo: Henry Whitehead, Lucida Studios. Image courtesy of The Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Art of Peace: New perspectives in visual art on peacekeeping from the 1990s is an Australian Research Council Linkage Project funded by the Australian Government through a grant of $435,984 (2023-2025) (LP210300068), led by Curtin University, in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia and National Trust (NSW), in collaboration with University of New South Wales, University of Melbourne, University of the Arts London and California State University.