THE Philippines-Australia Multicultural Association (PAMA) is a not-for-profit community organisation based in Ipswich and last week I was honoured to be part of the PAMA Art Exhibition “Diversity through
Cultural Immersion”.
The aim of this exhibition was to preserve, enrich and integrate the cultural identity of each migrant community through art expression and representation.
This will enable the migrant community to go on a journey of acceptance, productiveness, unity, peace which leads to nation building and progress.
The Art Exhibition was held at the Ipswich Community Gallery and was opened by Cr Nicole Jonic.
Local artist and a founding member of PAMA Stella Gibbs gave an inspiring speech about the importance of art to the soul while spoke on how important art is to the community.
Barbara Streisand once said, “art does not exist only to entertain but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth”.
How true of this exhibition, it wasn’t just about the art but how art can unite people to enrich multicultural friendships and integration of community’s economic, civic, educational and cultural life and leave a legacy to future generations.
Congratulations to Kareem Acdal for winning the Artist and People’s Choice Awards for the exhibition.
The subject of one of Kareem’s paintings is Apo Whang Od, the oldest tattoo artist in the world and lives in the Philippines.
I was so inspired and moved by the joy, love and care I felt being part of this exhibition.
Marissa Gutierrez and Jomar Nieva and the hard working team at PAMA must be commended for putting this inspiring and visually beautiful exhibition together.
Apart from invited international artists, this exhibition encouraged local Australian artists to highlight their artworks, they had many local award winning artists but also an Archibald winning artist as part of the exhibition.
With over 100 works on show this was an exhibition well worth seeing and if you missed out seeing or wanting to be part of this exhibition, don’t worry Jomar, Marissa and Stella are already talking about next year’s exhibition and I believe it will be bigger and better.
