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| Mr. Pierre Pelou & Mahin |
Office of the United Nations, September
17th, 2002
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
September
11, 2001, was the opening date of my first exhibition here at the
Office of the United Nations in Geneva. Since that date, a number of
painful events have overwhelmed the world, leaving my heart and
memory permanently branded by visions of terror, hatred and death.
Just a year ago, I accepted a commitment to Mr. Pierre Pelou which
was to return today with loads of love, hope and peace in my
paintings. I must thank him for having trusted me, but unfortunately
I have to confess that my present tonight will only be a sample of
my raw emotions rather than a structured reflection on peace. I
seize this opportunity to extend to him solemnly my congratulations
and appreciation for his great achievements with the Cultural
Committee of the United Nations. I thank him ever so warmly for the
patient guidance he has always shown me. It is almost to the credit
of my incapacity to deal emotionally and physically with visions of
horror, tokens of hatred and announced death of older men, women and
children, undergoing cold-blooded executions, just because they were
born on the wrong side of the rich man’s territory, that this
exhibition came into being. The invaders cannot stand men so
different from themselves, nor their reluctance to consent endorsing
the religion of money, which ultimately lead them to resort to
desperate means when all resources in their bodies and in their
minds have been exhausted to fight back the everlasting harassment.
How can they preach peace, when the global order wants war? Why
should they not talk about their differences, when everyone dreams
of a centralized, standardized, sterilized world? How not to mourn
their children, behold their images to make up for our urge to hold
them in our arms. What a luxury it would be, to talk about peace as
if it were attainable. What a satisfaction, too, to unite the
nations. But where is this ideal world where children can stay
friends, even when they have become grown ups. Faith to God, family
joys, passions of love on one hand, urge to overcome physical,
social, economical difficulties on the other hand, are values that
are necessary to men’s survival as a species. The weakness of these
values also rests in their strength. Without them, would it be worth
living? With them, you can be led to insanity and death. Repression
by itself cannot create the conditions of a long-lasting peace.
Fortunately, men fed with those values will not renounce. Our role
is to support them so their energies will thrive and focus on a
common ideal founded upon human dignity and mutual respect, in a
view to stop wrongful intrusions into peoples affairs and to put an
end to those ever expanding needs the leading societies of this
world cannot dispense with. The glory of our nations seems to be
gone forever to the confines of the universe as it has left room for
the cloning process of our species, first of its brains, soon of its
bodies. Let’s instead search for this ideal based upon difference,
let’s build it if we cannot find one and don’t we neglect to involve
children in this venture, for they know better than we do what
sharing, loving and dreaming mean. Let’s give them the means to
think for us, so we are left only with the executing of their
orders. Let’s watch them live, and accept to follow their examples.
Only they know what peace is. |
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