06.07.2022

Homage to Dani Karavan

Restoration of the Square of Tolerance

Dani Karavan

UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France

Following the death on May 29, 2021 of Dani Karavan, UNESCO Artist for Peace, Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, has decided to pay tribute to him on Wednesday, July 6, by unveiling his work installed in the gardens, Square of Tolerance, Homage to Yitzhak Rabin after its restoration.

In December 1993, Dani Karavan participated in the international meeting “Peace, the day after”, organized by UNESCO in Granada, Spain. This meeting brought together for the first time a large number of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals and artists. As a result of this meeting, Dani Karavan created an environmental sculpture in the UNESCO garden entitled Square of Tolerance, an environmental sculpture, consisting of a massive olive tree surrounded by grass, earth, sand and water, to symbolize the dawn of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. At the inauguration in May 1996, he paid tribute to the role played by Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister assassinated in 1995. The preamble to the UNESCO Constitution is engraved on the wall in all of UNESCO’s official languages as well as in Hebrew.

“His Square of Tolerance installed in 1996, which intertwines Hebrew and Arabic in the preamble of UNESCO, resonates today more than ever, to promote the culture of peace and refuse the denial of the other.”

Audrey Azoulay, May 29, 2021