A painted tree set against a dark blue sky sits atop a tangle of skulls and roots, symbolizing the tree of life. The painter hopes it will inspire an end to violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Someone once said, ‘You don’t really consider a place your home unless you’ve buried someone you’ve loved in the soil of your country,'” said the artist, Amy Swart, a College of Arts and Sciences senior.
To help end the Middle East conflict, the Boston University student is using art, like her tree painting, and a million signatures to advocate splitting the warring factions into two states.
Swart, who has worked with many organizations connecting art with causes, was a curator for an Oct. 18 exhibit called “Welcome to My Space,” which featured 17 pieces of artwork of landscapes significant to local artists who created them, just as the Holy Land of Jerusalem is significant to Israelis and Palestinians.
“[Art] connects to people on an emotional level, and sometimes we need that to get people to understand and be willing to go out and do something,” Swart said.
She said the exhibit, which was also sponsored by Students for Peace and OneVoice, a peace organization dedicated to ending conflict in the Middle East, aimed to raise awareness and collect signatures in favor of the two-state solution.
“There’s a significant amount that are Arabs who’ve signed. There’s a significant amount of Israelis that’s signed,” Swart said of the petition. “It’s great that so many people are supporting this.”
Swart said she advocates the two-state solution because it would divide up the holy spots of the warring areas equally so both groups can live in personal space.
“All it would do would follow the borders of the Six Years War,” Swart said. “Jerusalem is really the heart of the matter.”
Swart said she and other members of Students for Peace have seen how difficult it is to overcome the conflict, even at BU, and she wanted to express herself through art.
“I was just talking to the guy that was working at Campus Convenience . . . and he just kind of freaked out at me,” she said. “He said, ‘I think there will never be an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has to do with whose god is better.'”
Last year, Swart helped lead the BU Art Proliferation Society – a group aiming to expose art in as many areas as possible – and was a curator for another exhibit, called “Taste of Peace.”
“Amy does great work organizing these exhibits,” said Emerson College senior Yoni Vendriger, founder and president of Emerson’s Students for Peace chapter. “Her art really adds a big part to the events.”
Although she has been drawing since she was a child, Swart said it is still difficult for her to share her art with the public, despite her involvement in many exhibitions for a cause.
“I love doing art, but it’s so personal for me,” she said. “That’s why I like Students for Peace. It kind of gives me a chance to do curating on the side. I have a lot of friends who are artists, and I love getting them out there.”