In an increasingly divided world, empathy can seem to be in short supply. Currently on view in Joy City, one of the largest shopping malls in Beijing, is the Tolerance Project—a traveling poster collection started by Serbo-Croatian-born, New York-based artist, activist and MFA Illustration as Visual Essay faculty member Mirko Ilić. The Tolerance Project aims to celebrate and honor compassion as the starting point of all meaningful action toward building a more equitable, inclusive and just world. Tolerance posters appear in public spaces—parks, university campuses, even buses—thus engaging with a broad cross-section of the population to spread its message of goodwill. (Select works from the project are also on view in storefront windows along Korzo, the main street of Rijeka, Croatia.)

Ilić got the idea for the Tolerance Project four years ago, when he was asked to create brand identity designs for a film festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, that took place in a theater called the House of Tolerance. To offer their thanks, the festival organizers offered him a space to exhibit his own work. Instead, in the spirit of the theater’s theme of generosity and altruism, Ilić invited an international group of artists, illustrators and designers to create tolerance-themed posters, and the project picked up speed from there.

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