A picture says more than a thousand words, we are told.  At its best, Art leaves us with a deeper understanding of the world around us and our place in it.  Line and color express thoughts and emotions, and capture feelings that are difficult to articulate. And as these resonate with the viewer, a conversation begins with the artist and oneself.  For a few days in March, our World Bank children took us on a journey through their visions, memories, and feelings about family, the bedrock of their young lives.  While so doing, they raised questions surrounding international childhood that bridged the generations.

The Children’s Art Exhibition, a key component of WBFN’s Annual Exhibition, is open to children of the World Bank Group from ages 3 to 17.  Over 100 entries responded to this year’s theme, “Family—Everyone We Love.” Paintings, drawings, and collages, descriptive or abstract, were displayed on large freestanding exhibition panels.  It was exciting to see how many young people from our World Bank community were interested in participating and how fully they represented its diversity.

Early spring sunlight filtered through the glass ceiling of the World Bank atrium, the gentle splashing of the waterfall fused with the romantic strains of a popular Latin song sung to the accompaniment of a guitar.  It was a “Zen moment” for this middle-aged Third Culture Kid who grew up decades before Facebook could instantly connect virtual families across the world’s time zones.  Moving from one country to another as a child builds strong memories and emotions.  I remember friends and family asking my parents how I coped with changing culture and country and with integrating their own different nationalities.  As they were of one mind, they answered, all was well.  My parents were my point of reference for identity and security.  Any loss or confusion felt with the rupture of familiar routines and separation from loved ones was smothered by the bustle of travel, the excitement of discovery and energy directed to building new relationships.  The effort at integrating a community reduced feelings of dislocation and created a family associated with place. 

Those moments when a picture stops me in my tracks in a museum or arrests my magazine page-flipping are magical.  Sometimes it’s the artist’s interpretation that challenges my thinking, providing me with new perspectives, at others something resonates, maybe opens unsuspected doors, or takes me down long forgotten paths.  What would these young Third Culture Kids tell me of their experiences? What was Family to them? 

I stood back from the panels to take in the whole scene.  Rectangles of cheerful colors and brilliant suns, rainbows, landscapes, smiling faces, hands holding hands, pets and games with friends, pulsed across them with the toe-tapping seduction of Ragtime.  These young people were at ease with their new world and enjoying life. 

Yet drawing on my childhood memories, curiosity about the detail drew me in.  Entries were arranged in four groups: Group 1, presented works from ages 3 to 4, Group 2, ages 5 to 6, Group 3, ages 7 to 8 and Group 4, ages 9 to 11. I decided to view them chronologically given the differing sensibilities.

Moving through Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4, it was “here and now” that mattered, not the “now and elsewhere.”  The concrete--Mama, Papa, the brother, the sister, the family cat and rabbit—the Washington activities--the Saturday morning soccer, the Saturday afternoon baseball--and the transportable in memory or imagination--ghosts, the rocky shore of a California Beach.  There were few grandparents, even fewer aunts, uncles and cousins.  There was a national costume. And a fusion landscape, a Spanish Gothic cathedral set against an Australian beach, a representation of family background.  Perhaps Group 5 would attempt del-ving deeper into cultural roots than these vibrant paintings. But there were only blank panels.  Not a single entry.

The world of adolescence.  A busy time and a time of searching for oneself.  What is Family for our teenagers?  What dreams do they have of their roots?  Perhaps faced with a blank page Family became too complex to portray, emotions ran too close to the heart, or the home cultures had faded too far.  Maybe there was no space for the hundreds of Facebook friends.  As a teenager, absorbing myself in place had been my way forward.  Writing a letter to an aunt or friend thousands of miles away could be bittersweet, opening a door to yearning for things past that became uncomfortable as the common frames of reference weakened over the years.  Family was my parents and friends; culture an amalgam of experience.

With such thoughts buzzing in my head, it was a pleasure to realize how much I shared with these young people.  And, as true artists, they had got me thinking!