Speak Your Peace brings together Bay Area-based painters, digital, video and installation artists ranging in age, ethnicity and nationality to explore intercultural communication and social justice and propose new iconographies of peace through visual art. Included works by more than 20 artists and organizations present cycles of destruction and reconstruction through Japanese-American symbols of identity, draw upon traditional and symbolic Persian and Iranian cultural iconographies, debate the value of the prison-industrial complex in the United States and Cuba, reinterpret historic narratives relating to Salvadoran military histories, expose stories of radical, personal self-expression in the face of persecution through Persian-influenced graffiti installations and discuss the manifold ways popular media informs the way we envision and discuss peace.

Image: © Nobue Kano, SOMArts Cultural Center