Forum for World Peace and Other Stories was Dina Danish’s third solo exhibition at Stigter van Doesburg. The show presented a series of banners that rework the visual language of political news imagery—leaders at podiums, signing protocols, shaking hands, or posing for election campaigns. Like heraldic forms, the structure of these images is repeated worldwide, with only slight variations in content.
As Danish reflects:
“I am struck by the eventfulness of today’s state of the world: having been locked up, followed by a war, gas prices going up, the crowning of a king, the list is endless. I am witnessing extremely important historical events and feel the urge to document them. Or else I might forget. And so, I collect news imagery daily. The images sometimes depict trivial topics such as a Mondriaan painting found to be hung upside down for 75 years, but also politicians on top of their podiums, giving press conferences, signing protocol agreements, shaking hands, and posing for their election campaigns. What I find most appealing about this imagery is that it is a globally familiar one. The suits, the handshakes, and the backgrounds say the same thing worldwide: politicians have met up and agreed upon something that will likely change the course of our lives. Like medieval heraldic banners, the structure of the imagery remains the same, but the content changes slightly depending on which heraldic representation is represented.” (DD, 2023)
In the exhibition, the banners were realized with painstaking craftsmanship in fabric, ribbon, and color. This precision contrasts with the ephemerality of press photographs, lending the subjects an enduring weight that news images rarely carry. The works suggest that in the representation of political events, little has changed: forms and rituals persist, even as their contexts shift.
The exhibition was made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Fund, the Amsterdam Museum, Jakob Hodel, Maddy Caldwell, and Ana Resende.