Kim, one of many artists, storytellers and playwrights that descended on Mel Lastman Square for Friday’s Peace Fest, seeks to share stories of the traumatic past to enlighten the present and preserve the future.

U.S. museum visitors, who may not be intimately familiar with the Arab world and its gender dynamics, stand to gain a new understanding from viewing works by Arab women artists. The same would go for works by artists in any region that viewers don't know well. But there is a particular need within the Arab world for outsiders to see "beyond news headlines and night-vision photographs," says Sarah Hassan, a New York writer.

Oftentimes, when words fail, art has the ability to express our deepest pain and unrelenting hope. Visions from the Inside is a project enlisting 15 artists from across the country to create a piece of art based off letters from women in detention. The initiative, a collaboration between CultureStrike, Mariposas Sin Fronteras and End Family Detention, illuminates the horrific realities of life inside some for-profit detention facilities in the U.S., as well as the resilient spirit that keeps the inmates going.  

A Taiwanese artist donated his latest work made from discarded steel cables to Karlsruhe as a gift to the German city that is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year. Speaking about his work "Taiwan Wishful" at a news conference Tuesday, sculptor Kang Mu-xiang said he was pleased to play a part in promoting cultural diplomacy.

The theme this year is "All the World’s Futures." And in an introduction to the Biennale, the curator, Okwui Enwezor, writes, quote, "How can artists, thinkers, writers, composers, choreographers, singers, and musicians, through images, objects, words, movement, actions, lyrics, sound bring together publics in acts of looking, listening, responding, engaging, speaking in order to make sense of the current upheaval?" 

Touring Swan Lake in China is not the kind of cultural diplomacy that will help Australia gain a foothold in Asia.[...] The arts sector must engage with Asia and other parts of the world on cultural terms.  

"The art of photography can build a bridge between cultures and carry our collaboration forward. 'Concept: Turkey' is a very important event in terms of the meeting of two different cultures," Türkoğlu said. He also invited everyone who is interested in photography to become a part of the project in order to introduce the Turkish way of life as well as culture to the Americans.