For Kwibuka 30 – the 30th commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi – the Aegis Trust worked in partnership with others to produce mobile exhibitions displayed at the UN headquarters in New York, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, at the EU foreign ministry in Brussels and at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

NEW YORK

Commissioned by Rwanda’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York and produced in collaboration with the UN Department of Global Communications – which also created exhibition content for the occasion – a striking eight-panel display designed by Aegis was erected in the main lobby of the UN’s Manhattan HQ, telling the story of Rwanda’s descent into genocide and ascent to unity, renewal and peace.

Bearing the words ‘Peace is our choice’, the title panel boldly encapsulated a message from Rwanda, while offering a values statement which the multinational audience at the UN could identify with. An accompanying ‘Simple Booth’ kiosk made it easy for visitors to share the message visually. Over 1200 from a wide demographic did so (see https://www.simplebooth.com/gallery/Gqsvzdzz5uRV-peace-is-our-choice).

GENEVA

Commissioned by Rwanda’s Embassy in Geneva, the display featured at the Palais des Nations was an updated version of the Aegis Trust’s ‘100 Nights’ exhibition. The first edition predates the Kigali Genocide Memorial, but the 2024 edition erected in Geneva brought Rwanda’s incredible post-genocide journey of renewal and rebuilding right up to date.

BRUSSELS

The exhibition commissioned by Rwanda’s Embassy in Brussels for display at the HQ of the European External Action Service was a far more compact version of the one designed for use in New York – each panel being a similar height, but a third of the width, to enable it to be displayed in much smaller spaces.

Opened by European Commission Vice-President Josep Borrell on 8 April, versions of this exhibition were reproduced for commemoration events in Canada, Germany and Uganda, among other places.

PARIS

To mark Kwibuka 30 at its Paris headquarters, UNESCO commissioned the Aegis Trust to produce artwork for an outdoor 20-panel photography exhibition focussed on the four memorial sites of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda which were recently inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List.

For this project the Aegis Trust’s team worked with one survivor at each site, their memories providing a framework for the exhibition’s visual storytelling. Through each survivor’s interaction with the landscape, viewers were not only introduced to the site, but also to the human experience which makes it so meaningful.

You can explore the UNESCO exhibition here: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/remembering-genocide-against-tutsi