The Paper Peace Birds Project
This project grew out of a shared desire of two artist friends, Mona Shiber and JuPong Lin, to transform the agony of witnessing atrocities happening around the world. Our people come from lineages of occupation and struggle for sovereignty, from Palestine and from Taiwan. One of us wrote of “a desire to shift the stuckness, sadness, despair & loss through the need to make, to make meaning out of hopelessness & to make a reminder message to instill peace within myself & my many communities. I am deeply & personally affected by what is happening in the middle east, the land once known as the holyland.”
JuPong’s installations have incorporated paper cranes made from Buddha money or joss paper (ceremonial paper to honor our ancestors in Taiwan) for many years. The paperfolding turned into a poem in 2016 called “1000 Gifts of Decolonial Love” that embedded instructions for folding the crane. It became a videopoem and then community-engaged performances and installations, and continues to evolve in the form of this transnational peace birds project.
We are starting a movement: hundreds & hundreds of people sharing in the folding of thousands & thousands of doves & cranes. Will you join us in starting this movement in your own circles?
Ways to help:
form circles to fold for peace, cranes & doves, together with others.
fold many birds to be added to the evolving installations.
string together folded birds (more info soon at this page)
More opportunities to fold together will be posted on the News page.
WE’RE AIMING FOR 16,000+ PAPER PEACE BIRDS (FIGURES CHANGING AS THE DEATH TOLL IN GAZA INCREASES). PHASE ONE WAS THE INSTALLATION FOR OPEN STUDIOS AT THE COTTAGE STREET STUDIOS IN EASTHAMPTON DECEMBER 2, 3, AND 9.
PLEASE USE THE CONTACT FORM ABOVE TO OFFER HELP WITH STRINGING THE FOLDED BIRDS AND THE INSTALLATION, STAY UPDATED OR TO REQUEST THE ADDRESS WHERE CRANES CAN BE MAILED.
Phase two will continue into 2024; we encourage local communities to host paper folding circles and create regional installations. Hundreds of thousands of people folding hundreds of thousands of peace birds everywhere all over the world!
Dove folded from map of Jerusalem
#3-20B Clear Vision Studio
