By AZALETA ISHMAEL-NEWRY
NASSAU, Bahamas, April 11, 2019 – Jamaal Rolle’s latest visual art’s piece created a buzz at the recent UNESCO Forum held in Changsha and Nanjing, China. Projected onto a large backdrop, the 20-foot creation was highly admired by attendees and officials and many posed for a photo opportunity with “The Celebrity Artist”, who is also a cultural ambassador of his island nation, The Bahamas.
Rolle named the popular piece “A Vision United,” that embodied the message of the Third International Youth Forum (IYF3) on Creativity and Heritage Along The Silk Roads: Youth Creativity and Innovation in the Age of Media Arts held March 31 to April 6, 2019.
The colorful work of art featured a balanced colour scheme with abstract shapes that were labeled with the names of all the countries of the IYF3’s participants and interconnected, meeting at the center, where the artist had rendered the illustration of a realistic eye.
Kitso Rantao, a delegate from South Africa, expressed her feelings about A Vision United: “I think that if you look at it metaphorically, it speaks of how the youth are coming together to have a unified vision, which is something that previous generations could not see eye to eye. Generations of war that we have inherited, generations of segregation, generations of discrimination and not understanding each other, and us coming together in this space, working towards one vision, is a very power image and I am very happy that South Africa is part of a bigger vision for a better world.”
It was during a four-hour training ride from Changsha to Nanjing that Rolle began creating the masterpiece on his Wacom drawing tablet, thus creating a digital piece of artwork that boded well with the theme ”Innovation In The Age Of Media Arts.”
This was Rolle’s first trip to China to represent The Bahamas among 120 millennial leaders from 83 countries who collaborated and drafted the Changsha Initiative. While there, he met with His Excellency Sterling Quant, Bahamas Ambassador to The People’s Republic of China, who made the two-hour journey from Beijing to attend the Caribbean Film Festival that was held on the second day of the Forum.
“This will be an experience that you will cherish for the rest of your life,” said Ambassador Quant. “It will be memorable. Coming to China will be an experience in itself, not only the long flight but the difference in culture. And you would be surprised to see the way China has progressed over the past 40 years. It’s really a modern country, although the western world’s news reports are not all the time favourable.”
The organizers of IYF3 — UNESCO, the National Commission of China for UNESCO, and the Changsha and Nanjing municipal governments — hope to build on its successes, promoting communication and cultural exchange among Silk Road countries.
“As one of 10 participants from the Caribbean invited to participate in this Forum, it is no doubt an honour to represent The Bahamas,” said Rolle. “It was quite a powerful experience for me to be viewed as a thought leader of my generation among the more than 80 countries, and to be warmly embraced by the many delegates who had just met me.”
The objective of the Forum was to “provide youth with a platform to share their interests and ideas on “advancing creativity through the promotion of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, towards a sustainable future.”
For more information about The Celebrity Artist, Jamaal Rolle, please visit www.thecelebrityartist.com.
