TWO DECADES OF VISUAL ADVOCACY.
ONE YEAR OF ACTION.
Art Works Year 20 is a year-long series of programs, events, and celebrations marking two decades of visual advocacy for human rights and social justice.
BEHIND EVERY STORY IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ACTION.
BEHIND EVERY IMAGE IS A STORY.
20
YEAR 20 • IMPACT • NUMBERS • TIMELINE • CONNECTIONS • EVENTS • INSPIRATION • REFLECTIONS • GRATITUDE
A YEAR OF REMEMBRANCE—AND RESOLVE
Twenty years
of art
in service
of action.
Art Works Projects (AWP), a Chicago and The Hague-based nonprofit, confronts human rights abuses, challenges injustice, and mobilizes audiences beyond awareness to action through visual storytelling, new media, and public engagement.
Year 20 looks backward with gratitude, confronts the present with urgency, and builds toward a future where art does more than bear witness—it changes what happens next.
IMPACT FIRST
HOW DID THE STORY
MOVE TOWARD ACTION?
Numbers show how far AWP’s work traveled. These four areas show how the work moved beyond awareness toward action.
Stories entered rooms where decisions are made.
How visual storytelling informed policy, civic, educational, media, and institutional conversations.
Artists and advocates met power face to face.
How AWP connected lived experience with people positioned to amplify, fund, teach, and act.
ARTISTS DEVELOPED THEIR WORK—AND REACHED NEW AUDIENCES.
Through Emerging Lens, AWP provided project support, mentorship, and opportunities for emerging documentary photographers to develop their work and bring locally rooted human rights stories to wider audiences.
A story in one place became a conversation in another.
How AWP connected people, institutions, and movements across countries and continents.
01 / POLICY ENGAGEMENT
CHILDREN OF SYRIA
VISUAL TESTIMONY REACHED CAPITOL HILL.
In 2014, Children of Syria brought photographs by six photojournalists documenting the war’s impact on children into the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. Presented with UNHCR and the Better World Foundation, the exhibition included remarks by Senator John McCain—placing children’s lived experience of war inside a federal decision-making environment.
THE EVIDENCE
Russell Rotunda · Kennedy Caucus Room · Six international photojournalists · Sen. John McCain
UNHCR + Better World Foundation · Washington, D.C. · May 2014
02 / LEADERSHIP ENGAGEMENT
CONGO/WOMEN → THE PROSECUTORS
FROM AWARENESS TO TOOLS OF JUSTICE.
Art Works Projects’ work on conflict-related sexual violence continued from Congo/Women into The Prosecutors, a documentary and impact campaign designed to move the issue into legal, policy, and professional settings. The film reached institutions including the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and its Assembly of States Parties, and Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace. The campaign also produced multilingual screening tools and six training films for lawyers and investigators working on conflict-related sexual violence.
THE EVIDENCE
United Nations · International Criminal Court · ICC Assembly of States Parties
Special Jurisdiction for Peace · Multilingual tools · Six professional-training films
03 / CAREER DEVELOPMENT
EMERGING LENS
PROJECT SUPPORT. EXPANDING VISIBILITY.
Through the 2024–25 Emerging Lens cohort, Oyewole Lawal and Edwin Ndeke received project support, unrestricted grants, and mentorship while developing environmental-justice work rooted in Lagos and Nairobi. Their work has continued reaching new audiences independently: Ndeke’s photography appeared in The Guardian and at Alliance Française Nairobi in 2026, while Lawal received a 2026 ZEKE Awards Honorable Mention for Systemic Change. Their work comes together in The Hague during Climate Week, with Lawal’s ZEKE-recognized project also reaching Paris.
THE EVIDENCE
2024–25 Emerging Lens · Project support + grants + mentorship · Lagos + Nairobi
Ndeke: The Guardian + Alliance Française Nairobi · Lawal: ZEKE Honorable Mention
The Hague Climate Week · Paris
04 / INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS
TRANSITIONS
FOUR PLACES.
ONE SHARED EXAMINATION OF JUSTICE.
Transitions brought creative teams from Chicago, Bogotá, Goma, and Sarajevo into a shared curatorial exchange on transitional justice. Rather than simply sending an exhibition from one place to another, the teams co-curated the work and paired it with workshops and community conversations—creating space to compare post-conflict experiences and build solidarity across very different local contexts.
THE EVIDENCE
Chicago · 2016
Bogotá · World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates 2017
Sarajevo · WARM Festival 2017 · Goma 2018
CNMH · PCRC/WARM · Yole!Africa · MacArthur International Connections Fund
PHOTO: JEAN CHUNG · KABUL, AFGHANISTAN · 2006
PHOTO: JEAN CHUNG · KABUL, AFGHANISTAN · 2006
THE WORK OF WITNESS
Visual storytelling
makes distant
suffering harder to dismiss
The image is not the end of the work. It preserves testimony, shapes public memory, invites empathy, and opens a path from witnessing to action.
WHAT WE REFUSE TO SEE, WE ALLOW
REACH AT A GLANCE
TWENTY
YEARS
IN NUMBERS.
The numbers tell you how far the work has traveled. They won’t tell you what it cost someone to speak, what it took for a story to be believed, or what became possible when we refused to look away. The measure of this work is not only who saw—but who acted.
The story
is still being written.
PAST · PRESENT · FUTURE
2006–2025
We built the platform.
Across two decades, Art Works Projects created exhibitions, films, publications, and public programs with hundreds of artists and partners—moving human rights stories toward action worldwide.
2026–2027
We celebrate
by acting.
Year 20 carries that work forward through screenings, exhibitions, documentary campaigns, public programs, and conversations—turning reflection and recommitment into renewed action.
THE NEXT 20 YEARS
We widen the
lens.
AWP will connect human rights struggles at home and around the world, deepen partnerships, advance ethical storytelling, embrace new media, and build clearer pathways from story to action.
ACROSS BORDERS, CONNECTED BY STORY
The world
is not a collection of
separate crises.
Stories do not stop at borders. For twenty years, AWP has helped visual testimony travel—from the places where stories are lived to the places where they can be witnessed, discussed, taught, and acted upon.
SELECT A CONNECTION TO FOLLOW HOW A STORY MOVES.
WHAT’S NEXT.
THE ANNIVERSARY YEAR
PEOPLE
TWENTY YEARS
OF
COLLABORATORS
Meet artists, advocates, partners, staff, and supporters who carried
the work forward.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
PROJECTS THAT
SHAPED US
Revisit landmark work, the people behind it,
and the action it inspired.
YEAR 20 / LIVE
THE STORY KEEPS MOVING.
Follow Year 20 as Art Works Projects, our artists, partners, and communities carry the work forward through gatherings, film, and stories from the field.
ATTEND
UPCOMING EVENTS
WATCH
AWP VIDEO ARCHIVE
THE INSPIRATION BOARD
WHAT MOVED
YOU TO SEE DIFFERENTLY?
Submit art, photography, film, journalism, audio, or other media that sparked curiosity, challenged assumptions, or moved you into action.
AWP reviews every submission before it is considered for publication.
THE PEOPLE
WHO CARRIED
THE WORK
FORWARD.
VOICES ACROSS TWENTY YEARS
We invited former and current Art Works Projects staff, board members, artists, and partners to reflect on what they witnessed, what changed, what relationships endured, and what AWP should carry into its next twenty years.
STAFF & LEADERSHIP
But when you see these images, they’re not numbers; they’re people. I think we have a responsibility to see the humanity.
Since joining AWP [Feb. 2021], not a day has gone by that hasn’t stretched, challenged, or inspired me about the effectiveness and impact of the work that has been produced by my colleagues, our collaborators and partners.
AWP has helped us deepen our understanding, build solidarity, and bring greater humanity to complex issues. Twenty years is an extraordinary testament to the belief that art can change how we see and engage with the world.
As artificial intelligence reshapes how images are made and perceived, I believe it will deepen our hunger for authenticity, lived experience, and human connection.
ARTISTS & COLLABORATORS
Working with [Emerging Lens] has really opened up a lot of possibilities within exhibits that I had never thought of producing and could never have produced on my own.
When I was living and working in my hometown, Art Works Projects was a lifeline into the world of policy and development and of course the arts.
I think there’s a power in what you do as an organization in bringing people together who wouldn't normally be drawn to attending an exhibit, but whose presence and experience is critical to being able to have a holistic conversation
What particularly compelled me was AWP's commitment to amplifying the voices and lived experiences of those directly affected by human rights violations.
BOARD & FORMER LEADERSHIP
Our work to tell stories from the point of view of people experiencing human rights violations is really important. And for me, it all circles back to that morning I looked at my son and realized that genocide can happen anywhere. None of us are exempt.
Together with supporters from throughout the United States and broader international community, we stand resolute in our commitment and our efforts to secure a world where all can walk in freedom, agency, and dignity.
I believed passionately in the mission because it was expressed at a level of excellence… Audiences were educated through its work internationally in a way that was totally new and innovative…
For 20 years, Art Works Projects has been the “mouse that roared,” and today we are still roaring. We put incontrovertible visual evidence of deliberate inhumanity in front of decision-makers who can stop it, and say to them, “Stop dithering and do your damned job.”
PARTNERS, COMMUNITY VOICES & SUPPORTERS
If the pictures stir some sort of curiosity in the average person as they go by and see it, then the job is done.
Throughout the process, AWP was cooperative, responsive, and flexible. Having worked with local partners all over the world for over a decade, they truly understood the importance of letting local partners take the lead in the local contexts.
Thank you for creating a space for us to be SEEN…thus heard through visual messages which communicate our survival, sacrifice, and strength.
I’ve been amazed by the impact this small but mighty organization has had and continues to have on important issues globally.
STAY CONNECTED
GET YEAR 20 UPDATES.
Receive Year 20 program announcements, artist stories, event invitations, and news about the work ahead—plus ways to take action.
WITH GRATITUDE
THE WORK
HAS ALWAYS
BEEN COLLECTIVE.
We honor and thank the many artists, communities, staff, board members, advisors, strategic team, host institutions, funders, and audiences who strengthened this work—and helped carry it into the world.