ART, IMPACT AND RIGHT ACTION
A Talk & Conversation with
PAZ PERLMAN, Visual Artist, Climate Activist
Interviewed by journalist, Zen practitioner JO CONFINO
21 March 2023, Tuesday, 7:30-8:45 US EDT
Via Zoom. Free and open to all.
As climate activists, we often ask questions of whether we are having a great enough impact through our actions.
At the same time, how to avoid overwhelm and burnout when facing the magnitude of the polycrisis.
Journalist Jo Confino will be interviewing visual artist Paz Perlman about her journey from focusing on her personal healing to stepping into a collective awakening.
Paz will talk about the power of art to move individuals to take ‘right action’ as well as sharing how mindfulness can help us redefine notions of success and center us in difficult times.
ABOUT PAZ PERLMAN
Paz Perlman is a visual artist who exhibits internationally and has taken a particular interest in how art can support our collective awakening on issues such as climate change and social inequality.
She recently exhibited a large-scale art installation at a retreat of international climate leaders in the Plum Village monastery of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. The golden temple, titled Future Archaeology, was a metaphorical relic that highlighted both the great harm we have been inflicting on the planet and ourselves as well as the pathway to a regenerative future.
She was also commissioned to make an interactive installation, Down to Earth. which will be unveiled at a symposium on the global commons at the Garrison Institute in New York in March 2023. This work is an experience via the senses, offering a meditation on the interconnection between the air element, space and breath.
Perlman has taught Masters students in arts and ecology at Dartington College in England around the theme of impact. She is also co-facilitating a six day retreat this Spring for climate activists at a Zen centre in Greece.
Perlman’s artistic practice is influenced by her spiritual quest. Her early life was shaped by war, loss and migration. This created an urge, through her works, to heal the space where time and events leave their traces and scars; a fragile and unfolding process of discovery.
She trained as a dancer before leaving Israel, her home country, at the age of 19 to spend a year in an Indian Ashram. She moved to Los Angeles to train in Tai Chi and then settled in Amsterdam, where she changed direction to become a sculptor., working mainly with abstract forms.
A decade ago, her personal healing journey inspired another radical change in her subject matter and process, resulting in works that express fragility and impermanence, represented in installations, collages, painting and prints using a broad range of mixed media and found objects.
A profile in the HuffPost said that “Perlman’s multimedia sculptures and bricolage…..are born of a desire to piece together history. Not just her history, but a blanket of past trauma and pain that’s wound its way in and out of Perlman’s life.”
After graduating with a BA in Fine Arts from Central St Martins, University of Arts, London, in 2015, she lived and worked for five years from her New York studio, exhibiting in a number of galleries in the city.
Nearly three years ago, Perlman, who has studied with Buddhist masters in various traditions for the past 28 years, moved to live next door to the Plum Village monastery in the South of France.
ABOUT JO CONFINO
Jo Confino is a leadership coach, facilitator, journalist, sustainability expert and Zen mindfulness practitioner.
He works at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change; working with several organizations including Leaders’ Quest and Future Stewards. His coaching practice focuses on supporting leaders within the climate movement.
He is on the board of advisors for The Climate School and Force of Nature, a youth climate activist organization.
Jo has worked closely for the past 16 years with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and his buddhist monastic community in Plum Village.
He is co-founder and co-presenter of the acclaimed podcast series ‘The Way Out Is In’ and is chair of the board of Parallax Press, which publishes books on mindfulness in daily life.
Besides facilitating events and conferences all over the world for the past 20 years, he also runs smaller workshops and roundtables.
Until recently, he was executive editor, Impact & Innovation and Editorial Director of What’s Working at the HuffPost in New York. During his five years there, he developed long-term editorial projects based on social, environmental and economic justice and was a member of the senior leadership team.
Before joining HuffPost, he was an executive editor of the Guardian and chairman and editorial director of the Guardian Sustainable Business website. During his 23 years at the Guardian, he set up and managed a unique multi-stakeholder development project in the Ugandan village of Katine, and helped create the Guardian’s environment and global development websites.
Jo also created and managed the sustainability vision and strategy for the Guardian and its parent company Guardian Media Group.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and completed an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath.
Please support the Thich Nhat Hanh Foundation, which works to continue the teachings and practice of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, support their mindfulness practice centers around the world, and engaging in Sangha (community) building in order to foster peace and transform suffering in all people, animals, plants, and our planet.