Tom Bogaert documented genocide and human rights abuses in Africa and Asia for fourteen years as a lawyer for Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Five years ago, he resigned to become an artist.

Jack the Pelican is pleased to present “Amahoro,” the first one-person exhibition of Belgian artist Tom Bogaert. “Amahoro” is the Rwandan word for peace. It is a greeting, exchanged by people passing on the street.

Bogaert offers us a strongly uncomfortable mixture of tragedy and farce. On the one hand, he takes on immensely difficult subjects, including the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, in which as many as 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and their moderate Hutu sympathizers were killed. Then, there are the astronaut canaries…