MOTHERS IN ARMS
by Alon Goldsmith
Harnessing the universal power of photography, Mothers in Arms pays tribute to victims and survivors of gun violence through a series of images that bring into focus the trauma that endures long after the trigger has been pulled.
The primary goal of Mothers in Arms is to catalyze a shift in people’s responses to the travesty of rampant gun ownership in the U.S. The series features hard-hitting triptychs comprising portraits of mothers with a meaningful personal item, archival photographs of mother and child, and photographs of their burial sites or memorials. The five triptychs featured on this site are just a beginning of what will be an extensive visceral visual record of the thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by gun violence each year.
CONDUIT
by Doug Safranek
The name Conduit derives from the fact that we’re all conduits for our Mothers’ stories; every one of us is a child of a woman and we each carry our mother’s stories in our memory. Through our telling, these stories can be imparted to future generations.
The central focus of the exhibition will be a wall tapestry made up of egg tempera portraits, arranged like the squares of a large quilt. Quilts are a traditional art form found in most cultures around the globe;
they have principally been created by women. In more recent times, quilts have been adopted by movements as symbols of protest and solidarity—the AIDS quilt is a notable example.
The tempera portraits will be accompanied by video stories shown on a large screen in which the subjects of the portrait quilt tell a story from their mothers’ life in the first person. Juxtaposing portraits created in a meticulous, ancient medium with stories quickly recorded on readily available video conferencing software creates a certain dynamic tension. Shown above are just a few of the portraits on display.
Installation is planned to be featured in New York, at a date TBD.