An art exhibition is coming to Dayton, featuring portraits of people who fought for peace from every country in the world.
The International Peace Museum in Dayton is hosting a premier showing of the Project Peace Post art exhibit.
The Peace Post art exhibit features nearly 200 digital portraits, printed and arranged in an eight by 25 foot installation. Each portrait resembles a postage stamp, complete with texturized edges like a real stamp sheet.
The portraits depict public figures who have fought injustice across the world including Alfonso García Robles, Picasso, Ai Weiwei and more.
"The ultimate hope is that it does give hope and it does inspire."
The project was conceptualized and created in New York by Johnny Selman and his design team at Selman Design Studio.
"We do a lot of work with branding and identity design, but also campaigns and design systems. And typically work in our industry ebbs and flows," Selman said. "The client work kind of gets really busy sometimes and then sometimes there's crickets. And so I wanted to create something meaningful for my studio of about a dozen designers to work on when things got a little bit lighter."
A total of 102 artists collaborated on the piece over eight years.
Selman said the project started with artists connected to his design studio before branching out to other international creatives.
“The way it started was a lot of painting and drawing and sculpture and collage and it was a really beautiful thing for many, many years," he said. "And at a certain point, maybe like at year four, we started to commission the illustrations to people and illustrators and artists outside of the studio.”
An opening reception will take place on Sept. 6 from 5 to 8 p.m. for the exhibition on North Ludlow Street.
Selman and some of his associates will be in attendance.
“There'll be prompts to learn more about the individual advocates," Selman said. "There'll be some books on site and for the opening event we've printed these foldable brochures that fold out into the entire project as a big poster. So we'll be giving those away also at the reception.”
The exhibit will remain at the museum through Nov. 2.
Selman says he plans to use the project to educate youth across the country about hope and fighting for human rights.
"I think it's just to show folks that there are people out there that that are fighting for equality and human rights and peace. And there is more to all these countries than than just the negative stuff that you hear all the time," he said. "The ultimate hope is that it does give hope and it does inspire. Especially the younger generations, to look for that and to work towards that."
According to Selman, they have already seen interest for the exhibit at a library in the Bronx. He said the project could be re-created in various sizes and layouts for different venues.
"No one's making any money on this or anything and it's 100% for educational purposes," he said.
For more information about Project Peace Post, visit peace-post.com.
