Roundtable Breakfast - Envisioning Alternatives through Peacebuilding and the Arts

Monthly

NYC-DR Roundtable Breakfast

 Envisioning Alternatives through Peacebuilding and the Arts

Montreal based artists Khadija Baker and Mona Sharma, of Kurdish Syrian and South Asian descent respectively will speak on their artistic process and work that raises issues about current conflicts, displacement and memories of marginalized voices.

The artists collaborated with curator Jill Strauss, Adjunct Assistant Professor, John Jay Dispute Resolution Program, on the exhibition, CounterMemories: the Challenge of Restorative Justice Practice to create a space in which artists who use story telling as a basis for their work could make a case for their role within a restorative practices framework.

Baker has created an installation and performance dealing with the ongoing Syrian civil war. For her series of projected digital drawings, Sharma uses narrative to examine various historical and cultural contexts where the definition of justice has been stretched to interesting lengths.

In unique ways, these two artists and friends use their talent and capacity for empathy to imagine aesthetically, name and challenge, sometimes through metaphor and sometimes literally. Whether we accept the call to action or not is up to each of us, but either way, we are different for experiencing the world through their eyes.

See

http://johnjayresearch.org/cdrc/ 

for exhibit information