About Portal to Peace

Rooted in North Lawndale, this exhibition grows from a community shaped by resilience and cultural production, expanding outward to link Black histories with artists navigating parallel conditions worldwide.

The Portal Project began at the Lawndale Pop-Up Spot in October 2025, connecting with artists and community leaders in Mosul, Iraq, and in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and beyond. Inspired by these encounters, Faraz Hussain proposed an ongoing exchange between Chicago and Mosul through virtual meetings and shared artmaking—work created, traded, and carried across geographies, including Faraz’s trip to Mosul to meet artists and share the work in person.

Conversations revealed unexpected connections. In one exchange, artist Kent Jones asked Iraqi artists about the term “Chiraq”, a nickname that draws troubling parallels between Chicago and Iraq as war zones, pointing to how both places are shaped by systemic violence, sensationalized narratives, and the long reach of U.S. policy. From local realities (including ICE raids blocks away from artmaking events) to escalating conflicts in the Middle East, participants returned again and again to a shared desire for peace.

The exhibition brings together original works from Mosul, reproductions of Chicago artists’ works now exhibiting in Iraq, and new pieces emerging from the exchange. Satellite works from the Portal Project’s Fall 2025 engagements extend this network: “friends forever heart” murals with Mexican artists and Farragut High School students, coordinated by the One Lawndale Arts and Activism Incubator and the HEART Project (Alex Cruz and Hector Lopez); music and dance performances; and playful visual interventions (including fun, educational “eyeballs”) with Theo Thompson and the Young Doctors Club and Brazilian artists. Together, the works trace relationships built through reciprocity, humor, care, and shared making.

This exhibition is both a beautiful gathering and a call toward connection, care, and collective imagining—rooted in civil rights activism, nonviolent resistance, and cultural organizing, and grounded in the present realities of racial injustice in the United States. As Alicia Garza reminds us: “We are clear that all lives matter, but we live in a world where that’s not actually happening in practice. So if we want to get to the place where all lives matter, then we have to make sure that Black lives matter, too.”