The One Heart Call Project_Together building Community with the Voices of our Hearts through the Arts
The One Heart Call Project _ Together building Community with the Voices of our Hearts through the Arts
Nelson Mandela said we are born innocent and learn to hate. If we learn how to hate we can learn how to love and that courage is not the absence of fear but rather the triumph over it. Being an immigrant and naturalized citizen myself who was told not too long ago to go back to the country I came from, I am moved to address the fact that in our nation we are confronted with the ugly rearing of rising hate, suppression, systemic racism and inequality. The idea of inclusion, a founding principle of our country, now creates such overwhelming fear and anger towards others. Unfortunately the fallout of this destructive and negative energy is also felt by our youth, the elder and marginalized members in our diverse communities. This led to my community outreach and hope to encourage more people to embrace our diversity so we can find heart to overcome fear, hate, racism and divisiveness; only together are we able to face our challenges of the present and future. There is only one race, the human race.
In 2019 I began working on the OneHeart call with the help of students and staff of The Community School (TCS) in Spokane by recording their heartbeats and co-teaching an art class. The OneHeart call has now grown into a much larger Installation inviting our diverse community in Spokane to join creatively sharing their heart’s vision of representing the values of their long standing cultures. We not only want to highlight the beauty of our different cultural heritages joining together as one heart through the arts, but also bring awareness to the audiences who experience the exhibited and live elements of the presentation originating in Spokane.
My goal is to remind us all that in spite of all our beautiful differences, may it be language, culture, traditions or skin color, we all have one thing in common which is our beautiful heart! Mattie Stepanek in his book Journey through Heartsongs wrote that we all have Heartsongs deep in our hearts that need to be nurtured, listened to and kept alive amidst the challenges of life. He encourages us to share our songs with others until they find or reclaim theirs.
And my dream is to continue exhibiting this community collaboration in different cities adding new creative expressions of voices of the HeArt.