Horizon of exile, 16 mm stills taken from the 21 mins. film, Isabel Rocamora, 2007.

Shifting Sands: Recent Videos from the Middle East

September 13, 2012 –December 21, 2012
Rubin & LGalleries
Co-curated by Kate Bonansinga and Kerry Doyle

Shifting Sands: Recent Videos from the Middle East, features an international selection of artists who use film and video to explore the Middle Eastern desert as a site charged with meaning. The works included here directly and indirectly explore zones of recent conflict including the Israel-Palestine border and Afghanistan. Shifting Sands builds upon the Rubin Center’s commitment to our desert environment and desert land use issues. In 2007, artist collective SIMPARCH used the rocky hillside outside of the Rubin Center to site several passive solar distillation units that purified water taken from the Rio Grande River. After the water was rendered pure, it entered the gallery via a small pipe and became part of an installation that included ambient sound recorded at the border. During summer 2011 Light Lines by architects Jay Atherton and Cy Keener explored the use of light in the desert environment. Projects such as these allow the Rubin Center to create interdisciplinary bridges involving students and organizations from throughout the campus, including the Center for Environmental Resource Management (CERM) and the Centennial Museum’s Chihuahuan Desert Gardens.

Whitehouse, Lida Abdul, 2005.

 

The Desert Panorama, Akraam Zaatari.

Shifting Sands will be presented in conjunction with the Desert Initiative (DI) and with the annual meeting of International for Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA).DI is a consortium of art museums in the Southwest that are coordinating new, interdisciplinary explorations of the desert to take place in the Fall 2012-Spring 2013. The partnering museums include Phoenix Art Museum, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Santa Fe Art Institute, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Arizona State University Art Museum, which is the administrative and coordinating hub of the DI, amongst many others. ISEA is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and technology, and draws scores of emerging and established international artists to its annual conference. In 2011 it was held in Istanbul and in 2010 near Berlin. In 2012 University of New Mexico in Albuquerque will host the conference from September 17-22, with the Rubin Center hosting a pre-conference symposium on September 16, 2012. UTEP via the Rubin Center is the only venue in Texas invited to participate in either of these initiatives,both of which will generate additional opportunities to expand our audience,and to connect with both the border and the world.

Kings of The Hill, Yael Bartana, 2005.

Co-curated by Kate Bonansinga and Kerry Doyle under advisement of Noah Simblist (AssociateProfessor of Art, Southern Methodist University and Curatorial Fellow, Visual Art Center, University of Texas, Austin), Rijin Sahakian (Founding Director at Echo (Sada) for Contemporary Iraqi Art and Curator, Adjunct Programs for Iraq Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2011) and Nada Shabout (Associate Professor of Art History, University of North Texas). Participating artists: Lida Abdul (Afghanistan), Yael Bartana (Germany/Israel), Emily Jacir (Palestine/New York), Isabel Rocamora (Spain/U.K.), and Akraam Zaatari (Lebanon/UK).