Introduction

In their manual Working with Conflict: Skills & Strategies for Action, Simon Fisher and colleagues describe peace as a process, “a many sided, never ending struggle to transform violence” (Fisher, 2003, p.11). The manual discusses the three categories of intervention to bring about peace: peace-making, peace-keeping, and peace-building. Peace-making is the most immediate, short-term category designed to end violence and reach agreement. Peace-keeping is the next step where the agreement is monitored and enforced. Peace-building is the continuing, transformative form of intervention that addresses the “causes of conflict and the grievances of the past...to promote long-term stability and justice” (Fisher, 2003, p.14).

            In the course “The Arts of Building Peace,” we studied how art can contribute to this long-term, transformative process. We were each asked to interview an artist-peace-builder working in the world today to see how the theory we are learning applies outside the classroom. I’m an artist myself and over the past few years have started painting murals. My parents let me paint a mural first in our backyard and then in our kitchen. I have since painted other private murals on commission. But during my time at Brandeis University, I have become more interested in community art and specifically the possible social aspects of community mural-making. This interest was one of the reasons I enrolled in the course. I chose to interview the Argentinian artist, Claudia Bernardi, to learn more about the possibilities of community murals and how art is helping to bring peace to a small town in the war-torn northern part of El Salvador.

Bernardi founded and directs the School of Art and Open Studios in Perquin, El Salvador. Perquin is a small community in the northeastern state of Morazán, El Salvador. From 1980 to 1992, El Salvador suffered through a brutal civil war that claimed the lives of 75,000 people. Bernardi arrived in Perquin in 1992 to help with the exhumation of victims at El Mozote, a small nearby town where hundreds of peasants and their children were killed by army troops in 1981. Afterward, a priest asked her to paint a mural in the church there (Blue, 2005). Bernardi painted more murals in surrounding towns and returned over the years to continue exhumation work. In 2001, the mayor of Perquin asked Bernardi to set up a school of art for the town. It took three years for them to open the School of Art and Open Studios, a free art school for the citizens of Perquin and surrounding communities. Much of the funding came from Bernardi auctioning her own artwork.

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