katerina jebb

THE UNEXPECTED SIGN OF PEACE

 

When Olivier Zahm asked me to contribute to the Purple Peace issue, I was at a loss and could not think of a suitable subject matter. Two months later, I was walking to my studio and found an abandoned book, in a language I didn’t understand, in the street. It was contained in a plastic freezer bag with indications for the duration of food storage. I went up to my studio and did a Google image search. The book’s title, I learned, was The Geopolitics of Hunger, written by Josué de Castro, a brilliant thinker and activist against world hunger. De Castro was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1954. The book I had found was written in Persian, which is compelling given the current political landscape, and perhaps more so for someone obsessed with signs and symbols, like me. I phoned Olivier and…