As war’s deafening language drowns out calls for peace globally, Rwandan visual artist King Ngabo’s new installation, "The Calling of Children” emerges as a poignant, urgent testament to the need for universal protection, most especially for children.
The illustration, taking place at Ingabo Museum in Rebero, Kigali, since October 8, comprises 10 drawn artworks that show children playing, some watching others play and others heading home from school and vice-versa.
The majority of the children have disabilities; some walk on wheelchairs and others walk on crutches. There are some pinned papers on a board and some on the sandbags that seem to be children's distractions, yet they are some war-related findings and research-based facts with statistics of various child-victims who lost their lives in different wars.
The artist shared that he wants this exhibition to last long enough to pass the message of stopping war in the entire world.
"I know I don’t have the power to change the world, but I can use my art to change the perspective. The mission of this installation is to showcase the stark, brutal reality faced by mothers and children who are always fleeing homes, navigating war zones, and having no shield against the violence that soldiers attempt to wall off for themselves,” said Ngabo who wishes that this illustration can reach to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) so that all entities that goes there can understand their role in protecting war victims and stopping war at all costs.
By the thought of a war, he said, the actual victims are not those who start the war, and they are not the soldiers who go to the war to fight; instead, they are those who neither know anything about what’s actually going on nor are capable of protecting themselves at all.
When asked about the message behind the 149 sandbags wall spotted at the exhibition, the artist explained that they reflect the frontline soldiers in the warzones who normally set some protection measures, more often using sandbags to create walls that can keep the bullets and bombs at bay.
The installation also highlights various small toys for kids in the background of the wall of sandbags.
"As the soldiers build walls for protection, if those walls were not only set to protect them, but also to stop the war and to protect the victims, including children and allow them to preserve their childhood and live an unbothered life,” Ngabo said.
He said that he named his exhibition ‘The Calling of Children’ because it encompasses that, when children cry out for protection, they call not only for themselves but also for the survival of their relatives, their rights, and their chance to grow into responsible global citizenship with the futures that still need to be protected worldwide, since no one deserves to be killed in war.
This artistic silent plea that demands a shield of peace is accompanied by a deeply evocative soundtrack from artist and architectural designer JIM MGS.
With the concept of October 7, 2024 being the date on which Hamas militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier, attacking military bases and massacring civilians in 21 communities, ‘The Calling of Children’ soundtrack is a 7-minute and 10-second instrumental that starts calmly and peacefully, extends with some rise in strong and cracking waves that lead to chaotic, gunshots and bomb sounds with lots of screams and howls in the climax and backward to the hard calmness.
Some of the statistics and findings pinned in this illustration show that so far in 2025, over 473 million children (nearly 19% of the world's children) are living in or fleeing from conflict zones, and most casualties are civilians, with children being the largest number.
From 2005 to 2025, more than 120,000 children were killed or maimed, while more than 100,000 children were recruited into armed groups (Source: UN Security Council, 2025).