Hanna Quadir

Using art forms as a means of conflict resolution across communities

“I want to encourage both the artist and the viewer to use art forms to record and interpret multiple perspectives and develop an understanding that no single story exists.” – Hanna Qadir

As a patron of the arts and a recent recipient of the Columbia University ‘Excellence Fellowship,’ London | New York based social scientist, Hanna Qadir (MSc) believes in harnessing the healing power of art in the field of conflict resolution. After spending an extensive career leading teams and resolving conflicts across a range of corporate industries, Hanna decided to utilise her business strategist background to initiate new collaborations across the disciplines of art, conflict resolution and social sciences. Remaining interested in the convergence of logic and creativity, she spent 18 months of scientific research understanding how to use the combined power of science and art forms to initiate a new creative dialogue for action and social change.

Her work has involved interviewing and working with a number of artists including: Adrian Wright, former RA military veteran, Alex Harsley, founder of the 4th Street Photo Gallery (a New York based nonprofit photography collective) and its community of photographer artists, Ray Kumimoto, a Japanese visual and sound artist who believes in the sound of nature and listening to silence to awaken people as well as other minority artists using art to free themselves from the burdens of society. Her research found that using art forms to engage with the community offered an alternative and promising new way to look at conflict around us. It is her desire to highlight through her work that not all communication is verbal and to express those narratives that cannot be put into words through exploring a range of situations and identities where art performs a healing role.

Hanna is currently working on a project, Look See Talk, calling attention to the role of photographic images as a means of conflict resolution. Using a range of photographs by both well known and emerging photographers, the project will invite the audience to consider stories – both seen and unseen – of the actors in the photographs. The overarching mission is to understand that beauty can be found even in a conflict situation, and to search for that beauty within themselves as well as the images.

For more information on her research work and publications, please feel free to contact Hanna at hq2178@columbia.edu

Hanna Qadir encourages an awareness of the multiple layers that exist within us as a means of interpreting conflict, like multiple reflections of the same persons image in a mirror.