Vernissage: Thursday, August 4 at 6 pm
Exhibition: August 5 to 27, 2005
Exhibition Press Release:
The McClure Gallery is pleased to present a mixed-media exhibition in collaboration with the Montreal Dialogue Group and the Full Circle Mandala Project that features the collective works of Jews and Palestinians/Arabs who are actively engaged in finding the human in the “other”.
Meeting in the Middle for Peace in the Middle East is an exhibition based on an intercultural exchange with an emphasis on peace, through mutually supportive Arab/Jewish relationships. The project is meant to bring awareness to spiritual, humanitarian and social issues through the participants’ personal stories told in writing, painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media.
A group of Montreal Jews and Palestinians/Arabs, some artists, some not, collaborating for the first time, created a collective artwork in the form of mandalas (symbols of sacred and structural unity). The mandalas are constructed from a wide variety of materials, including paper made from Israeli and Palestinian newspapers, newspaper clippings, family photos, mementoes and bits of journals. The participants also cast their hands and faces to create sculptures that express the immediacy of their physical and emotional involvement in the stories they have recreated.
This project was initiated by Helga Schleeh (artist, director of the Full Circle Mandala Project and Visual Arts Centre faculty member), and Nada Sefian and other members of the Montreal Dialogue Group.
With special thanks to Engrenage Noir, the CRB Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support.