Miami, Sept. 15, 2022 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Kendall Campus Gallery of Art + Design, in collaboration with Khawam Gallery, presents the art exhibition Crossing Borders: Artists from the Middle East and the Americas. The exhibition is open now through Oct. 5. Admission is free and open to the public.
Crossing Borders: Artists from the Middle East and the Americas features works by artists Ilan Averbuch, José Bedia, Linda Behar, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Galen Cheney, Adnan Charara, Andrew Cotton, Ivonne Ferrer, Tony Khawam, Sibel Kocabasi, Santiago Medina, Carlos Sablon, and Celia Wilkinson. The artists are from Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, France, and the United Kingdom.
The exhibition showcases how their cultural history intertwines with the American experience, and the impact of their heritage, immigration, and the new American culture on their lives and art making. Although the artworks may differ esthetically, there is much that connects them conceptually. Common threads are recurrent references to their heritage history, shared experiences, indigenous mythologies, and social norms.
Tony Khawam is an award-winning artist and curator of the Crossing Borders: Artists from the Middle East and the Americas exhibition. Born in Aleppo, Syria, Khawam lives and works in South Florida. His work is exhibited nationally and has been collected by several museums and private collectors in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, and has been featured in numerous art magazines. He is the author of several cultural exhibition catalogues with a focus on heritage, social concerns, and immigration intertwined with the American culture. His work examines the cross-cultural dynamic in communities for better cultural bridge building and understanding. He is dedicated to nurturing new art to engage and connect our diverse communities through dynamic exhibits with stimulating specialty programs and inspired events to ignite cultural enrichment.
The featured artists of the Crossing Borders: Artists from the Middle East and the Americas exhibition often invoke national art histories, either in tribute or subversion, but also engage with current happenings, and international artistic trends. The artists enter into dialogues with traditions of the past at the same time that they participate in current global artistic discussions. Their simultaneous engagement with the past and present, speaks to a singular creative present. The artists explore history, create commentary around current happenings with mark making techniques, materials, and process in a variety of media.
The exchange of ideas and acknowledgement of influence of these artists have long comprised the tenets of creative production by creating a new lexicon of post-modern commentary. Intentionally borrowing and sharing pictures that were local to their heritage and experience as a way of breaking apart conventional notions of ownership, and offering a playful storied history of originality in art that bears closer examination.
For more info, contact Cristina Mateo, mmateo@mdc.edu, 305-237-2992 or visit https://khawamgallery.com/crossing-borders/.
WHAT: MDC Kendall Campus Gallery of Art + Design Presents Crossing Borders: Artists from the Middle East and the Americas
WHEN: Exhibition: Open Now Through Oct. 5
Hours: Wednesday 11 a.m.- 1:30 p.m., Monday – Friday by appointment at 305-237-2246.
WHERE: MDC Kendall Campus, Gallery of Art + Design, Bldg. M, 11011 SW 104 St.