Month: March 2018

IA&A Presents Research at the Global Ties U.S. National Meeting

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Last month, IA&A’s Cultural Exchange Programs team was delighted to participate in the Global Ties U.S. National Meeting right here in Washington, DC! IA&A is a National Member of Global Ties U.S., an organization that strengthens relationships between individuals and nations by making international exchange programs more effective. As a National Member, IA&A shares the commitment to promoting a peaceful, prosperous world through international exchange.

Our team was thrilled to represent IA&A at the National Meeting and to share the findings of our International Partnership Initiative report, Art in Context: The Current State of International Cultural Engagement, at the annual event’s very first poster session.

We had a fantastic time learning about the local, national, and international efforts of Global Ties U.S. members to initiate, sustain, and drive exchange opportunities. The passion and dedication was contagious, and our team left even more inspired to advocate for exchange programs. Program Officer Chris Sciotto was happy to elaborate, saying “[Director] Jennifer Schrock and I met an incredible array of people in the exchange, arts, and culture communities. We really left feeling inspired and with such an emboldened sense of purpose and possibility for the future of cultural exchanges.”

IA&A and the Cultural Exchange Programs team looks forward to connecting with other members of the Global Ties U.S. community to promote IA&A’s mission of cross-cultural understanding. Read the report below, and we hope to see you next year!

Can You Name Five Women Artists?

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The National Museum of Women in the Arts’ social media campaign #5WomenArtists is back! According to NMWA, work by women artists makes up only 3 to 5 percent of major permanent collections in the United States and Europe, which might be why some have such a hard time answering the question, “Can you name 5 women artists?”

In 2017, more than 520 national and international cultural institutions and nearly 11,000 individuals joined the campaign to promote women artists. This year, museums, galleries, and arts organizations around the world are helping spread the #5WomenArtists challenge far and wide. As Susan Fisher Sterling, Director of NMWA, says, “There is no better time than now to raise awareness that the art world also disadvantages women’s opportunities and advancement, with women artists of color experiencing a double disadvantage in an already challenging field.

This Women’s History Month, International Arts and Artists (IA&A) is taking the challenge and sharing the stories of five creative, diverse, and innovative artists who have participated in our J-1 Exchange Visitor Program! Read on to celebrate these artists and join us in contributing to the dialogue on gender inequality in the arts by using the hashtag #5WomenArtists!

Gohar Dashti

From Tehran to DC, Gohar Dashti creates work that connects audiences through a shared humanity. The Iranian artist has spent more than twelve years navigating the various social issues of the world through photography, bringing sensitivity and empathy to the art form. Trained at the Fine Art University of Tehran, Gohar often draws on personal life events in order to build bridges between the personal, universal, real, and political. Her work is inspired by her surroundings, her memory, and her personal perceptions, and it sparks important dialogues about conflict, citizenship, and civility.

IA&A is proud to have supported Gohar in her early career as a participant in IA&A’s ArtBridge program. In 2008, Gohar was part of a group of six emerging and mid-career Iranian photographers who visited the United States to participate in ArtBridge (pol-e honari, in Persian), a unique exchange program coordinated by IA&A. Since participating in ArtBridge, Gohar has become an internationally-acclaimed photographer with exhibitions at prominent museums and galleries around the world including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Mori Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Contemporary Art Museum, to name a few. She also curated IA&A at Hillyer’s 2017 exhibition Urban Mapping, which featured work by ten Iranian artists that reflected on the impact of political and social transformations of public space on the collective experience of Iranian citizens.

To learn more about Gohar, check out IA&A’s profile on this talented artist! You can also find out more about her work by visiting her website or following her on Instagram!

Mia Daniels

Mia Daniels uses everyday objects to situate her work within a context where myth and the unknown reside. She aims to cultivate a sensitivity in her work as a way to consider uncertainty and the fragile divide between beauty and decay. A scholar from Canada, Mia completed a residency program with the Textile Arts Center (TAC) in Brooklyn, NY. During her time at TAC, she discovered that engaging in textile craft in today’s world can embody both an experience of labor and luxury.

On her creative background, Mia explains, “I grew up in a house filled with beautiful handmade textiles from different parts of the world: Guatemala, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Lao, Nepal, India . . . the art of my home, they embodied my experiences: an intimate recollection of travel, family, adventure, and the ability to immerse yourself in the joyous unknown.”

To learn more about Mia, check out IA&A’s profile on this talented artist! You can also find out more about her work by visiting her website or following her on Instagram! A version of this interview was originally published on the TAC blog by Sam Crow.

Amalia Pica

Born in Argentina and based in London, Amalia Pica uses sculpture, performance, installation, and photography to explore the nuances of communication. Last year, Amalia joined the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) for the BMoCA + Swoon International Artists Residency during her time as a short-term scholar with IA&A. During her residency, Amalia continued her work on exploring landscape as a romantic background for images that deal with the desire for political expression and on tools utilized to teach language to great apes during the 60s and 70s in America.

Amalia’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Venice Bienniale, and the Tate Modern in London. In 2014, her work was included in the group exhibition, Under the Same Sun, presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her artwork is part of MACBA, and the Guggenheim’s collection.

You can find out more about Amalia’s work by checking out #AmaliaPica or by following her on Instagram!

Emily Whittingham

Emily Whittingham’s unique internship experience was a fantastic example of the opportunities available through the Exchange Visitor Program! Challenging the stereotypical idea of an internship, Emily used the opportunity to follow her dream of becoming an artist and a puppet maker. She landed an apprenticeship with Puppet Kitchen Productions and spent her internship working alongside some of the best puppet makers in the business.

Each apprentice at Puppet Kitchen Productions also has the opportunity to work on a project of their own during their program. For her project, Emily created a puppet of the Carpenter from Lewis Carroll’s poem The Walrus and the Carpenter. “To me, cultural exchange means taking the step outside of your own home and culture to live in a new land and experience a new culture,” she told us. “With somewhere as diverse as New York City, I feel that cultural exchanges happen almost every day!”

To learn more about Emily, check out IA&A’s profile on this talented artist! You can also find out more about her work by visiting her website, connecting with her on Twitter, or following her on Instagram!

Zemer Peled

Zemer Peled‘s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Born and raised in Israel, her sculptural language is informed by her surrounding environment and landscapes, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. The association of porcelain with refinement and civilization is turned on itself when broken into shards. In Zemer’s organic formations, a whole from the shards is recreated, estranged from its original context, but nonetheless unified by an overall cohesiveness of movement and composition.

In 2013, Zemer participated in IA&A’s program as an artist-in-residence with the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, MT. At the Bray, artists from around the world with a vast range of experiences and diverse aesthetic approaches, cultures, and perspectives come together. Since then, Zemer has exhibited internationally at venues including Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), among others. Her work can also be found in many private collections worldwide.

You can find out more about Zemer’s work by visiting her website or by following her on Instagram!

IA&A Launches “Youth Art Month” Photo Contest

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March is Youth Art Month! It’s a month of promoting art and arts education in the United States, with thousands of American schools and organizations participating, often with the involvement of museums, galleries, and other arts institutions.
IA&A invites our exchange visitors and #J1Alum to submit photos taken during their J-1 visa exchange program that relate to the theme of Youth Art Month! Photos can be of exchange visitors promoting arts education, engaging with museums, creating works of art, or anything else you feel captures the theme.

Winning photographs will be selected based on how well they represent the theme and the unique goals of IA&A’s Cultural Exchanges Program, which is to promote cross-cultural understanding and support the next generation of creative leaders.

The contest winner will receive a $50 Amazon gift card, with a runner-up receiving a $10 Amazon gift card.

How to Participate:

Contestants may submit up to two (2) photos for consideration. Photos must be emailed to programming@artsandartists.org, sent via Instagram direct message to @internationalartsandartists, or sent via Twitter direct message to @IAAExchange, on or before March 31, 2018.

Winners will be notified by email soon after the deadline, and the winning photo will be announced on IA&A’s website and social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter).

Contest Rules:

  • Photos must depict activities that took place during a J-1 visa exchange program sponsored by International Arts & Artists.
  • Photos must be original, high quality photos submitted as a .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or .gif file.
  • Each contestant may submit up to two (2) photos.
  • Each photo submitted must include the photographer’s name and submitter’s name, if different from the photographer.
  • Each photo submitted must include a caption describing the photo or event.

By submitting a photo, contestants grant IA&A a royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual non-exclusive right to display, distribute and reproduce the entry for promotional purposes. Any photo reproduced will include a photographer’s credit.