Artists & Curators

Curator & Symposium Speaker: Susanne Slavick, Carnegie Mellon University

Symposium Speaker: Elin O'Hara Slavick, University of North Carolina

Symposium Speaker: Megan Kate Nelson, Brown University

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Exhibit Dates

January 23 - March 8, 2014

Reception Date

January 23, 2014

Description

Out of Rubble features the work of eighteen international artists from more than 10 countries. The exhibition examines many complex issues and contexts surrounding war, from causes and consequences to the possibility of recovery. Curator, artist, scholar and activist Susanne Slavick initially published this collection of works as a book, Out of Rubble (Charta 2011) to consider the devastation in the aftermath of war. The exhibition features photo-derived prints and altered digital construction collages as well as large-scale contact prints made from actual rubbings, photographs of hand-constructed tabletop models, collaborative projects between visual artists and photojournalists, and a video animation that simulates the raining down of rubble.

The exhibition asks viewers to examine the rubble that each war leaves behind and how it physically, psychologically and politically affects present and future societies. Out of Rubble not only faces the failure and wreckage of war, it aims to make sense of the incomprehensible. “Aware of the masters like Goya and Kollwitz whose portrayals of war haunt to this day,” Slavick explains, “I began to seek out contemporary international artists who react to the wake of war—its realities and its representations. I collected some of their invariably somber responses, both tender and unflinching, in a book project, OUT OF RUBBLE. Unfortunately, witnessing and sifting the remains of traumas we inflict on each other, through state-sponsored or individual acts of violence, never seems to end.”

Document Type

Image

Keywords

War, Devastation, Aftermath, Trauma

 
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