I was able to attend a showing of the cultural exchange rate exhibition on Thursday at 7:30. I thought it was very interesting. For me, it really brought up the thought of cultural identity and how some people feel that they have lost that and the journey it takes to look in the past and get it back. The part about how her grandmother was older than the border and therefore did not really accept it brought up thoughts about assimilation. I thought about how immigrants were forced to forget their culture and learn a new one and how often the cultures are lost. It really stuck with me the emotion in the speaker’s voice when she was talking about the additional struggles that Lebanese people face when trying to travel. This brings up the focus of citizenship. Their citizenship is often not seen seriously and/or questioned by authorities. The cultural exchange rate was also focused on how the currency changes when it passes borders. Borders do not have to be visible – a lot of times they are invisible – but they are still there.
https://taniaelkhoury.com/portfolio/cultural-exchange-rate/
Thinking about this exhibition and this artist and my enjoyment, I hope to experience other exhibitions by this artist in the future. I really enjoyed how it was a live art experience that was interactive and immersive to engage the audience. In this way, the audience becomes the performers and the artist does not have to be and often is not present for the showing.
Wow, "Borders do not have to be visible - a lot of times they are invisible - but they are still there". That is definitely something we should talk more about because that is definitely true. With the topic of keeping a culture, as someone who has parents who are both immigrants, they would always stress that they didn't want us to lose our Japanese culture. They made us go to Japanese school and I hated it because it was additional school and homework time compared to my other friends who did not go to Japanese/Saturday/Sunday school. I never understood why my parents paid so much money just for us to go to a school that I thought was "stupid" and "useless". But now looking back, I realize that it is a privilege that I was and still am able to keep my culture because I had the resources to do so. Hearing Tania El Khoury's story in person and reading your blog, I was reminded again.
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