ZAIM, Yokohama, Japan

I remember seeing a sculpture of a voluptuous Korean woman with a potato in her hand called "Abundant Potatoes." It was at the Mori Art Center for a show called "Happiness" and the piece was made by the artist Kim Chul-Eok from the DPRK at the height of a famine1,2.

The topic was quite nebulous but it allowed visitors to see interpretations of happiness by different artists (some paid for by the government to speak on their behalf). The last piece was Yoko Ono's "Mend," which is a set of broken cups the visitors can glue, tape or tie back together. There are small joys and big joys and we cannot judge someone else's happiness or desires as false at face value.

So in this way an exhibition about peace will not stick to one person's definition of peace, and if it did then all the images would be bountiful harvests. A good show would venture into the questions raised by the critics of "peace", whether intellectually or more holistically. The difficulty of pinning it down verbally makes is a prime subject for visual art, too.

Maybe the show was a bit disjointed because it wasn't curated. Instead it was a project by artists. That's why ZAIM was perfect, the place looked like an artist's studio. It was like a giant collaboration between all kinds of creative people using photography as a medium. The danger of curating a show about peace is it could easily become someone's soapbox. And this surely wasn't - since everybody has a piece they think is off topic. In my mind this means it was successful.