Through the Roadblocks : realities in raw motion

Abstract

The challenge facing the curators has been the consideration of what is the art of a place or region or, more importantly, what are the problems associated with curating an exhibition from a politically and geographically defined region, namely, the Mediterranean and the Near East, a space punctuated with roadblocks and borders as agents of exclusion and obstacles to crossings. Nonetheless, people and ideas do cross roadblocks exposing the porosity and instability of these enforced demarcation lines. Many artists’ works from this region propose a transnational narrative, suggesting that notions of collectivity and shared identity are much more fluid and circumstantial than narratives of nationalism and/or ethnicity would have us believe.

The concern of the curators has been to focus not only on the final outcome but, more importantly, on the relations between the participants, on the networks of agency that have been generated by them, on process, on the value of interdisciplinary collaborations, as well as on the value of the arts as a research methodology that provides a creative framework for establishing collaborations across national boundaries.