02/11/2012
The Gallery Project at Hillel Call for Submissions: Family Histories
Juried by Alia Al Senussi, Art Basel Committee Member
and Former Albion Gallery Director
The Gallery Project at Hillel invites art submissions of all mediums from Brown and RISD students to respond to the theme of Family Histories. We are extremely lucky this spring to have Alia Idris Al-Senussi juror this upcoming exhibition. Alia graduated from Brown University Magna Cum Laude in 2003 with a double major in International Relations and Middle East Studies. She holds an MA in Political Science from Brown and an MSc in law, Anthropology, and Society from the London School of Economics. Alia has contributed to many art endeavors over the years including the Serpentine Gallery, the Edge of Arabia exhibition, Art Basel, and Tank Magazine.
Alia: My experience in the art world has been very much influenced by my upbringing and cultural heritage. I am half-Libyan, half-American and am working in a variety of professional and philanthropic ways to promote Middle Eastern artists in the wider art world, universalizing these artists rather than ghetto-izing them. Artists often draw on their experiences and knowledge to create art works, and when dealing with an artist who is of non-Western origin, this often can cause the artist to be labeled as something apart from the greater art world. How ultimately are artists supposed to be labeled when they use a family/ethnic history to create their work, or influence their style and artistic vocabulary?
The Gallery Projects encourages artists to consider legal and/or political, anthropological aspects of Family Histories in submitting their work. We invite considerations of how a chosen medium or artistic form can be borne out of an artist’s upbringing, and examinations of how non-family institutions can sometimes act as family, i.e. government systems or schools. Artists, please focus on alternative ways of reporting and recording, and submit artwork that in some way responds to the complicated, disparate, and yet somehow unifying theme of the ‘family history.’
Submissions due to Rachel Kay and Hannah Antalek: [email protected] , by March 16.
