Happy Art Home began with a circle. Found across cultures and times, this simple form became the starting point for a community art project. I chose the mandala for its Buddhist associations and its connection, in my work, with peace.
I wondered how a feeling of peace might pass from one person to another, and from an individual to a group. Repeating the mandala became a way to explore that movement. One motif joined another. Small compositions grew into larger ones, gradually becoming a space people could enter.
The project developed between 2001 and 2005, after my return to Cambodia in 2000 following many years of exile. During this period, I produced nearly two thousand impressions. I first printed on paper, then on red wool felt. The red embodied heat and the energy of reconstruction I felt around me in Cambodia. Later, I also printed on pale pink handwoven organza.
I experimented with mandalas ranging from the size of a small button to more than a metre in diameter. A motif measuring 13 centimetres became a recurring unit. Printed again and again, it formed combinations that expanded into increasingly large compositions.
The work grew as it travelled through exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Tokyo. Eventually, I wanted to create a room that could host activities as well as be viewed. I printed eight-metre strips of mandalas and folded them in half to enclose a space of 16 square metres.
At the Aomori Contemporary Art Centre, the installation took a pale rose colour. It recalled the cherry blossom season in northern Japan and the robes worn by Buddhist nuns in Nepal. A red felt version was later shown at Chiang Mai University Museum, followed by presentations at Bangkok’s National Museum, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum and Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery in the United Kingdom.
The workshops grew alongside the installation. After moving from Australia to Southeast Asia in 2000, I was living in a Cambodia still marked by the aftermath of genocide. I wanted to create moments of peace and joy with children, including Khmer children in Cambodia and Burmese children near the Thai border. Some had limited access to schooling, materials and basic necessities.
Working with volunteers and translators, I developed workshops that could connect these children with others elsewhere. We often began with quiet attention, meditation or games, before moving into drawing, sewing, collage and other forms of making. Peace was something to experience together, in the present moment.
Each child’s contribution became part of a larger composition. Shared materials and colours gave the work a patchwork structure, while leaving room for different feelings and stories. These might concern cherry blossoms in Japan, life in a Burmese migrant community in Mae Sot, or experiences following the tsunami in southern Thailand.
Sometimes children from different countries worked on the same piece at different times. Drawings, stitches, words and marks overlapped or sat alongside one another. Two languages and two personal worlds could meet on a single piece of paper or fabric. The growing work carried these encounters onward.
In the mapping workshops, children explored their connections through maps at local, national and regional scales. They first located people and animals they knew and loved: parents, siblings, friends, relatives and pets. By sewing lines between places, they made these relationships visible.
They then imagined connections with people they had never met. Japanese children could reach, in thought and feeling, towards children in Southeast Asia, particularly Burmese children. Around the time of the tsunami, these workshops offered a way to feel close to others whose circumstances were more difficult.
Other exercises began with a drawing or handwritten mark made by another child. Participants responded to it and added their own contribution. When the pieces were brought together, individual boundaries became less fixed. Different experiences could coexist within a shared composition.
At the end of each workshop, we looked at the work together and listened to the children’s reflections. These moments often brought laughter, recognition and joy. Each contribution mattered to the whole.
Through Happy Art Home, I came to understand peace as something that can be practised through attention, imagination and making together. The workshops invited children to move with confidence from familiar relationships towards unknown ones. A small gesture could open onto a wider world.
