BLIND DATES: New Encounters from the Edges of a Former Empire
Guest-curated by Defne Ayas and Neery Melkonian

Tracing what remains of the peoples, places, and cultures that once constituted the vast Ottoman geography, “Blind Dates” instigates a series of interdisciplinary “match-made” encounters to mediate ruptured pasts and to consider their effect on life today. At the heart of the exhibition are research-based artistic collaborations that bring together practitioners from Armenia, Bosnia, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey, with their transnational counterparts in Europe and the United States. These newly produced projects explore attachments to images, voices, and histories that collide with existing taxonomies of nation-states, art histories, and identities. On view is a cluster of sensibilities that nest at the verge of remembering and forgetting, truth and fiction, real and imaginary.

www.blinddatesproject.org

Participants include: Silva Ajemian and SCE Faculty Aslihan Demirtas

November 19, 2010–February 12, 2011
at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery
144 West 14th Street
2nd floor