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Held online with participants from around the world, discussions – The Art of Remembering: Culture as Witness and Prevention – explores how creative expression can normalize hate or help defuse it. Participants spoke about their expertise in the slave trade and slavery in Africa, the Holocaust, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994, and the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.
Chaloka Beyani, Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention and Deputy Secretary General, spoke at the Art Remembers: Culture as Witness and Prevention event.
Opening the event, Chaloka Beyani, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, described hate speech as an “early warning” sign of atrocity crimes. Such rhetoric, he warned, often precedes and accompanies “crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide,” underscoring the need for vigilance and responsibility in how narratives are shaped and disseminated.
Left to right: Marie Josèphe Angélique (1705–1734), a slave woman accused of arson in Montreal, portrayed by Marilyn Carr Harris (courtesy of Dr. Afua Cooper); Brothers Emanuel and Avram Rosenthal, Holocaust survivors, Kovno Ghetto, Lithuania (US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Shraga Wainer); Innocente Nyirahabimana, a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (Myriam Abdelaziz); Mirzet Hrustić, survivor of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica (Srebrenica Memorial Center, courtesy of Mirzet Hrustić).
Reframing history through culture
Valika Smeulders, Head of History at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, notes that many cultural institutions are rooted in a history of domination but can also play a role in confronting it.
Drawing at a museum exhibition Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slaveryheld at the UN in 2023, it highlights the stories of women who hid rice in their hair before being forced to cross the Atlantic.
Their actions, he said, reflected foresight and resilience, helping society recognize enslaved people “as individuals who had agency, who had a name.”
He notes that in museums, the history of the transatlantic trade in African slaves has long been separated from European history by distinguishing between what is written and what is remembered.
By highlighting these stories, the museum is able to weave together the story of the entire Netherlands and countries affected by Dutch colonialism. “Because in the end, this is a history that becomes a forum for our society today,” he added.
The panel was held on Juneteenth, the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States in 1865, and focused on the United Nations program to International Day to Combat Hate Speech.
Israeli clarinetist and co-creator of Lebensmelodien or Melodies of Life, Nur Ben Shalom, speaks at the Art Remembers: Culture as Witness and Prevention event.
Music from the Holocaust
Israeli clarinetist and co-creator Lebensmelodien or Melody of LifeNur Ben Shalom describes music as a form of remembrance and resistance.
Inspired by a letter from his great-aunt Salomea Ochs Luft, a pianist who was murdered during the Holocaust and who urged her family to avenge her death, Ben Shalom said music “is a witness to the extermination of the Jewish people. When we perform these melodies, we are also at war.”
“Art is not neutral,” he said, speaking from southern Poland where his students performed the same song at Auschwitz Birkenau, the concentration and death camp of Nazi Germany (1940-1945).
“Art is power. It is a secret power, a secret weapon, a good weapon that we have with music, because music touches the heart directly.”
Rwandan actor and playwright Diogène “Atome” Ntarindwa speaks at the Art Remembers: Culture as Witness and Prevention event..
When culture becomes a detrimental tool
Rwandan actor and playwright Diogène “Atome” Ntarindwa reflects on the role of RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines) or “Radio Machete”, in normalizing the dehumanization leading up to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 through jokes, music and entertainment.
Ntarindwa joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front, entering Kigali in 1994 amidst the genocide against the Tutsi. He identified her not as a survivor, but as a witness.
In the play “Hate Speech” he plays one of the actors who often appears on RTLM.
By reconstructing these broadcasts on stage, he said, art becomes “a kind of weapon” that can reveal the mechanisms of hatred.
He also spoke about the need for solidarity and allies, having visited Auschwitz himself.
Memorial artist Aida Šehović speaks at the Art Remembers: Culture as Witness and Prevention event..
Art as memory and resistance
For Bosnian American artist Aida Šehović, art offers a means for collective healing and understanding through shared rituals.
The project is ongoing ŠTO TE NEMA commemorating the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide through thousands of traditional coffee cups arranged in public spaces, and often accompanied by traditional coffee making – a simple everyday act that for thousands of survivors remains forever incomplete.
Participatory installations transform memory into shared civic action, transforming memory from personal grief to collective responsibility, and thereby countering denial of the atrocities committed.
Participatory installations transform remembrance into shared civic action, transforming remembrance from personal grief to collective responsibility.
The Art of Remembering: Culture as Witness and Prevention formed part of Beyond the Long Shadow: Engaging with Difficult Historya series of UN discussions exploring the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, the Holocaust, the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica.
