Encounters is a groundbreaking project by Nicola Green in collaboration with global religious leaders. The artist spent a decade travelling the world, witnessing and chronicling new developments in global religions and historic changes in how they interact with each other.

Green was invited to intimate private meetings as well as global summits with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Pope Francis, former Grand Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa, Emeritus Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama. She met with Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Baha’i, Jain, Confucian, Humanist, Shinto, and indigenous leaders. Green observed that these leaders were contributing to a new era in our collective history - they were working out how to publicly articulate their respect for other faiths without undermining the absolute truth of their own beliefs.

Each artwork has a bespoke patterned background that incorporates spiritually and symbolically rich imagery particular to the faith of the sitter and the details of each encounter. Great care has been taken to consider the significance of each motif, and each portrait is handmade using ancient gilding and embellishment techniques so that it is bejewelled with the history, faith and culture it represents.

Encounters is the first and only artwork in the history of global art to portray all of the world’s major religions together and without hierarchy. Whilst the individual portraits celebrate our differences and what makes us unqiue, they should be viewed together as one unified artwork with the world’s faiths standing togehter side-by-side. It draws from the interwoven cultural traditions from the global history of art and the universal human desire to create patterns.

The subject of each portrait has been painted in muted tones to obscure the face and hands, turning identity into a fluid category. This creates a blank canvas on which we can project our own image, stimulating questions of our relationship to those who are different from us. It creates a space in which we can transcend politics and prejudice. Encounters encourages viewers to reflect on the slow and quiet progress we have made towards peaceful coexistence and tolerance, and imagine an optimistic future.

Encounters has been exhibited at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London and the Saïd Business School, Oxford.