Compassion

As part of the University-wide Year of Compassion initiative, the Carlos and the Emory Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics present an exhibition designed to help visitors explore compassion in a concrete and experiential way. Compassion: What Moves You? invites visitors to explore what motivates us, moves us, and gives us purpose; how we find empathy and resonance in one another through our shared humanity and diversity; how and why we sometimes fail to be moved, fail to find common purpose, and neglect to protect or help others in need; and what we can do to address that. 

Featured artists include Shingo Kanagawa, whose father series explores his relationship with his often-absent father and his deep desire to connect with him, and asks how we can empathize with those who may struggle to know themselves.

INOCHI THEATER: If Your Life Were Light by Japanese artist collective ARu, Inc.—Kosuke Matsushima, Masashi Fujimoto, Ryoji Yukino, and Sui Nacazima—reveals our common humanity and interdependence through flows of light linked to the human heart.

The exhibition also includes works that explore the relationship between compassion and conflict, featuring a segment of Ota Shogo’s The Water Station directed by Emory Theater Studies professor Héctor Álvarez opposite a gallery on the life of Richard Moore, who was blinded during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This leads into work by students around the world participating in Emory’s SEE Learning® education program alongside artists represented in the Carlos Museum’s permanent collection of Works on Paper—Danny Lyon, Manjari Sharma, Kristin Capp, and José Ibarra Rizo, among others—whose works explore themes of identity, memory, and the connective threads of our shared world. Finally, visitors are invited into the Compassion Lab, a space to reflect and engage in an ongoing dialogue on compassion.

This exhibition is curated by Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, associate teaching professor in the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics at Emory University and global professor at Keio University, and Jennifer Knox, director of character education and Ron M. Brill Chair of Ethical Leadership at Woodward Academy, with Andi McKenzie, curator of works on paper at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, serving as facilitating curator.

Compassion: What Moves You? is organized by the Michael C. Carlos Museum. This exhibition was made possible by the generous financial support of the Charles S. Ackerman Fund, the Christian Humann Foundation, and Keio University.

Learn more about the Year of Compassion

Associated Programs

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For press inquiries and high-resolution images, please contact Emily Knight at emily.knight@emory.edu.