An exhibition by the acclaimed artistic group Piece Process will be featured at the University of Rochester's Hartnett Gallery from Thursday, March 22, until Sunday, April 22.
Piece Process, formed in Chicago in 2002, is a collective of Jewish and Arab-American artists devoted to addressing the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More than a dozen artists from that original exhibition have stayed together to further address the Middle East conflict through new works and exhibits. The group was also featured in 2004 at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art.
The local exhibition, titled "Piece Process IV: After Lebanon," provides an artistic space for multiple voices to raise dialogue above hate and ignorance and explore peaceful solutions to the current problems. The choice of the word "Piece" in the group's name rose from their recognition that no art exhibit can create pragmatic solutions by itself. Instead, the collective has aimed to raise the level of dialogue between conflicting groups.
The works in this exhibition feature a broad range of media including photography, design, painting, and video as well as two site-specific installation projects by Jenny Polack and John Pitman-Weber. Other artists participating in the exhibition include Rajie Cook, Granite Amit, Hanah Diab, Nick Fox-Gieg, Doris Bittar, Abdelai Dahrouch, John Halaka, Michelle Feder-Nadoff, and Kaanan Kaanan. An artists' talk by Cook, Polack, Amit, Diab, and Pitman-Weber will be held at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 22, in the Haven Lounge in Wilson Commons on the University's River Campus, and will be followed by a reception in the Hartnett Gallery at 6:30 p.m. All events are free and open to the public.
The Hartnett Gallery, located in Wilson Commons on the University's River Campus, is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and noon to 6 p.m. on weekends. For more information, contact the Hartnett Gallery at (585) 275-4188 during gallery hours or check online at http://www.cc.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/?visualizing.
This exhibit is funded by The Humanities Project, a year-long initiative at the University of Rochester to emphasize the influence and contributions of the humanities to academic and civic life.