Mok Yan Ling, a 12 year old Malaysian girl created history for Malaysia when she won the 9 to 12 years old category of the United Nations’ Art for Peace 2012 competition. It was a great achievement for the 12 year-old for emerging among the top winners of the international art competition that included 12 young artists in their respective categories that included winners from the US, Germany, China, Pakistan, Russia Indonesia and Kazakhstan. Angela Kane, the UN High Representative of Disarmament Affairs presented Yan Ling’s original artwork to Datuk Hussein Haniff, Malaysia’s permanent representative to the UN in New York recently.
The United Nations’ Art for Peace 2012 Competition was organized by the UNODA (United Nations Office of Disarmament Affairs) which was held earlier this year.
This annual competition was held between February 1 and April 30 this year where children around the world were required to use art as the medium to express their interpretation and vision of a world ‘free of nuclear weapons’. In total, there were 6,623 unique artworks submitted from 92 countries with a single strong message of peace.
In Yan Ling’s artwork, she wrote ‘I dream of a world with no fighting, where everyone is determined to make it a better place got future generations. The doves of peace will overcome all greed and set us free from nuclear threats forever’. The insightful and profound caption for her artwork won the hearts of the 140 jurors who were from 40 countries comprising of art and education specialists and experts. The artworks and entries were judged based on creativity, composition, theme and technique components.
