Menu
Art for Human Rights has worked with hundreds of artists from around the world since 2002. Here are some of them.
Over the years, U2 have actively participated in many Art for Human Rights events and projects.
They have facilitated Amnesty International’s presence in several of their tours, helping the organization raise awareness of crucial human rights issues. The also sang a cover of John Lennon’s Instant Karma for Amnesty International’s Save Darfur album.
Bono and The Edge co-funded 7 out of the 14 memorial tapestries commissioned by Art for Human Rights and contributed to the fundraising for the Freedom Flight Film. In 2004, the Edge joined Yoko Ono in the inauguration of In the Time of Shaking, a fundraising art exhibition in Dublin.
In 2005 U2 and their manager Paul McGuinness were awarded the Ambassador of Conscience Award for their commitment to human rights.
Yoko Ono is a longtime collaborator of Art for Human Rights. In 2004, she joined The Edge in the inauguration of In the Time of Shaking, a fundraising contemporary art exhibition and sale at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. A few years later, in 2007, she generously contributed John Lennon’s song royalties to the Make Some Noise project, resulting in the Instant Karma album.
In 2016, alongside Bono and The Edge, Yoko Ono revealed Mellow Submarine, a tapestry honouring John Lennon, designed by artist Peter Sís and created by Atelier Pinton.
Damien Rice has collaborated on various projects with Art for Human Rights. Notably, he performed at Electric Burma in 2012, a concert honouring Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2017, he held an acoustic concert at the Olympia in Paris, with proceeds supporting Amnesty International through the Eleanor’s Dream project by Art for Human Rights’ Bill Shipsey. In 2021, Art for Human Rights promoted his song Song for Berta, a collaboration with JFDR dedicated to the late Honduran activist Berta Cáceres. In 2023 Art for Human Rights and Amnesty International participated in his European and North American tour.
Peter Sís is a Czech born, American illustrator and children’s book writer who has collaborated with Art for Human Rights on many projects.
Over the past decade, he has designed 14 tapestries in honour of John Lennon, Seamus Heany, Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel and Martin Luther King Jr, which are now exhibited in Prague, Athens, New York, Cape Town and Bogota.
In 2018, Art for Human Rights commissioned his illustration Si morg to produce a large azulejos tiles mural which has been installed in Lisbon. A similar project of his Velvet Bridge is to be installed in Prague.
His children’s book Nicky and Vera: A Quiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued was published in 2021 with the support of Amnesty International France and Art for Human Rights.
Peter Gabriel, who was awarded the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2008, funded tapestries by Peter Sís honouring Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, and Martin Luther King Jr.
He also composed and recorded the music for Amnesty International’s Freedom Flight film, featuring an orchestral version of his human rights anthem Biko and narration by Angelique Kidjo and Nazanin Boniadi. The soundtrack includes the Ode to Amnesty poem written by Bill Shipsey, now translated into twenty languages.
Ana Juan, a renowned Spanish artist and illustrator, who has created more than 20 covers for the New Yorker, contributed to the 2018 I Welcome Refugees project. Her piece, Bird Uprooted, represents the plight of refugees who were forced to leave their countries.
Art for Human Rights commissioned an Azulejos mural of her illustration Solidarité, which features the Eiffel tower as a pencil in support of freedom of expression.
The 10 square metre Azulejos mural is completed and is awaiting installation on a wall in Paris.
Matteo Pericoli, Italian architect and artist, contributed to the I Welcome Refugees project with an imaged window view depicting more than 20 iconic landmark buildings and structures, some of which have been destroyed in wars.
His most significant project with Art for Human Rights is Windows on Elsewhere: 60 Refugees, 60 Views. It features a collection of 60 window view drawings by Pericoli, created over three years, depicting the present window views of sixty persons who were forced to flee their countries. His drawings are accompanied by short texts written by the refugees describing their journey from ”elsewhere” taking inspiration from their drawn window view.
Seamus Heaney was a longtime collaborator of Art for Human Rights and supporter of Amnesty International. In 2003, he allowed his poem, From the Republic of Conscience, to be the inspiration for the Ambassador of Conscience Award, an award conceived and created by Art for Human Rights founder Bill Shipsey. Heaney presented the inaugural award to Václav Havel at a ceremony in Dublin.
In 2004 he allowed his translation of a poem by Horace to be further translated into 24 additional languages and published as part of the book Anything Can Happen.
Sting, a lifelong member and supporter of Amnesty International, who took part in the groundbreaking Conspiracy of Hope and Human Rights Now! music tours in the 1980s, collaborated with Art for Human Rights on a number of projects.
He co-funded several tapestries, including those in honour of Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. In addition, Sting unveiled the Sophia Vari tapestry I Love Greece at Athens International Airport in 2018. In 2021, he co-funded the Freedom Flight drone theatre film.
Marie Šeborová, a Czech sculptor, has created three memorial busts in bronze in memory of Eleanor Roosevelt, Václav Havel, and Liu Xiaobo.
To date, 18 casts of the busts have been produced and can be seen in various public spaces, universities and museums around the world.
Pan Cook is an Irish cartoonist and activist.
Commissioned by Art for Human Rights he has created 10 cartoon strips detailing the lives of global human rights leaders: Eleanor Roosevelt, Liu Xiaobo, Greta Thunberg, Vaclav Havel, Peter Benenson, Nasrine Sotoudeh, Malala Yousafzai, Luis Basilio Rossi, Berta Cáceres and Cao Shunli.
His cartoon of Berta Cáceres was animated to accompany Song for Berta, a piece by Damien Rice.
Internationally acclaimed Colombian artist Fernando Botero took part in the first Artists for Amnesty exhibition in New York in 1977.
In 2017, he allowed Art for Human Rights to commission a giant Aubusson tapestry featuring his painting Los Musicos. The tapestry is displayed at Bogota International Airport in honour of the people of Colombia.
The Greek artist Sophia Vari provided Art for Human Rights with the image of her painting I love Greece, which was also made into an Aubusson tapestry to thank the people of Greece in 2018 for their solidarity with refugees. The tapestry was unveiled by Vari and Sting in Athens International Airport.
Singer, song-writer and activist Joan Baez was a co-founder of Amnesty International USA. She took part in Amnesty’s first international campaign against torture which led to the adoption of an international convention on the issue.
In 2015, Baez received Amnesty International’s Ambassador of Conscience Award, sharing the honour with Ai Wei Wei that year.
In 2023 a documentary on her life I Am a Noise directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle was released
Actor Nazanin Boniadi is an Amnesty International Ambassador. She was forced to flee Iran with her family when she was 2 years old. Nazanin contributed her story and window view to Windows on Elsewhere.
She also narrated the poem Ode to Amnesty for the drone theatre Freedom Flight in English and Farsi.
