Posters that challenge prejudice

Raphael Etgar with two of the 44 posters in his Coexistence exhibition. Picture / Dean Purcell

He doesn't expect visitors to have an on-the-spot epiphany. Or to be flooded with waves of guilt over something they might have done. But Israeli artist Raphael (Raphie) Etgar has great faith in the ability of art to alter thinking, even weeks later.

"You absorb these things, they go into the back of your mind, and they percolate," says the 58-year-old curator of the 44-poster Coexistence exhibition that is going up behind the Britomart transport centre, where turf has replaced the pay-and-display carparks.

The contemporary images, by artists from around the world, plead for respect for others, more kindness, more consideration, more love.

"I am concerned about the walls people build in their hearts," says Etgar.

Auckland is the 23rd city in which the free, open-air exhibition has been mounted. Etgar, who is married with three adult children, has been on the road with it for three years. It opens tomorrow night, and a highlight will be the unveiling of the New Zealand work that won a competition for a place in the show.

The timing, of course, is exquisite. Global outrage among Muslims over cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad shows little sign of abating. Nor is the situation in Etgar's homeland improving, with violence, he says, having become a way of life.

He spent 10 years in Germany, and returned to his birthplace, Jerusalem, to find things more violent than he remembered.

"I had this enormous need and urge to create a place that would maybe calm people down."

With backing from a German family which made its money in publishing, the result, in 1999, was the Museum on the Seam - the name reflecting its location in Jerusalem between Arab and Jewish enclaves.

Coexistence grew out of the museum and started touring in 2001. It ends on March 5, next stop Sydney.

* Raphael Etgar speaks at the Auckland War Memorial Museum's Apec Room on Thursday, February 16, at 7pm.